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Y INTO THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL 
STABILITY IN POLYNESIA | 


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AN INOUIRY INTO THE QUESTION 
OF CULTURAL STABILITY . 
IN POLYNESIA 


13 hs 
MARGARET MEAD 


NEW YORK 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1928 


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PRINTED IN GERMANY, J. J. 


PREFACE 


This study was completed in the spring of 1925, after which time 
the author spent nine months in the Samoan Islands. The sections 
dealing with Samoa have been revised in accordance with findings 
in the field. All statements about Samoa not definitely attributed to 
published sources are based upon this field work. Mr. Best’s mono- 
graph upon “The Maori Canoe”’ and Mr. Skinner’s paper upon ““The 
Outrigger in New Zealand and Tahiti’? were both published since 
the completion of this study. The sections dealing with canoes in 
New Zealand and the Society Islands have been revised in the light 
of this material. With these exceptions, this study is based upon 
sources which were published earlier than May, 1925. As the main 
object of this paper was the attempted solution of a general theoret- 
ical problem in the light of Polynesian material rather than the 
assemblage of a large number of details about various aspects of 
Polynesian culture, the inclusion of material from later publications, 
where such material would neither add nor detract from the central 
thesis, has not been considered necessary. 


The American Museum of Natural History, New York. 


May 14, 1928. 


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 


I am most deeply indebted to Professor Franz Boas under whose 
direction this study was undertaken and completed, and to Pro- 
fessor William F. Ogburn and Dr. Pliny KE. Goddard to whom I owe 
many of the opportunities which made it possible for me to pursue 
my graduate study. I have to thank Mr. H. D. Skinner for his 
generosity in reading and criticizing this paper. For help and 
criticism in the preparation of the manuscript I am indebted to 
Dr. Ruth F. Benedict, Miss Marie Eichelberger and Miss Hannah 
Kahn. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Pages 

PES eo oo aa eG aa a 9 
ere ete ePaeIC I COMIPION oo. ce wc et wee benseces 15 
Ee eT PhS, GIP stole cg) weiss wis pe t-ess'bve v's sl Sale es 15 
re Oa Pe te ed oe Si ao ay! betel vs n'a Wialew ele e oo uele os ed 15 
REO MIATOUCEAS . Fee... ce ek ees Need phd dire << saviiyl oh stadia, « 18 
a REL Coho! ci ag ue ea o.6is pa a segieieie 6a scpep se wes 22 
ge ee sas sched beso eb sa¥erecececae's 28 
SNE MMI A GM oie abe ad g's San okies Wao ane bec webwe cele ee 32 
PROT OIOS, IFUUGING . 4... iw cc pele bln cle edie pce ciee ou a wiee's 35 
peremtieer seticnrit COMPIOX 6 Sy be oe a ee he te wa de Se ce eewlens 43 
Sara UMN ae ME No eG Sia Vy) oui g 08 0s Anan Ss ¥<o Bie" HAI 4, Oia, y pe wee 8 43 
eee Dh oars g's kW oi oilge ei visited wie as sale es 43 

I NCE cy Seis esc ns Sve coe a he eee aa teeen cope cut 47 
EERE Et ices ais | x «i. ses se pales «we Skoda wks de tea 52 
tio cos 550 ses hogs ey weld be eo a Ree ele 2 58 

Sea EN A Ere 5 ee gk oie bk a) W ical aes pve Wid nl la le enlace dof Sica oe ah ants 61 
Re eee 2978 80 0 2 ea ee 65 
a PN Renee T NEEM ey SS Si alyiaa es Winvs wis ee ee Pieulale eolws ed Daye 71 
I MOR IAG Lige ois os ein elon s fase siet Se be see e sence estan ees s 7] 
MINT ered Ay ood Gabe < ocs vio 4 elke wwe oo ann a 6s woos fp 
RTE ERIN Pre gad S's sd alae eho eras fC teas De ne oe - 72 
RINE Se IR oh oa SS era dated detache ae ai Ov whe 74 
er eG oid Salal ea aidlate al elehe siatwl oe ws Wp wee eos 76 
Ee 05 Ely goal oi aio. ave, enacctel ors-b ale pS 6 ¥ishbiatels 78 
IRR RECPOAINE coo oy x gow ales worse altered ven goenne ss emacs 80 
a a Fg 2 Ig A cy cnn eV ah 3's; wx 0)> wi whaaeod #4 milena ess p ice aie es 82 


Nap tae chip Gand aca bs wise afewsa ol 0s) w 0. a whim ao ekh nie, oe Saye 85 


Me ge 


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INTRODUCTION 


The problem of the stability of different elements of culture, 
their relative sensitiveness to reinterpretation and different em- 
phasis, is of importance in the attempted solution of two problems: 
the attempt to reconstruct the history of a primitive culture, and 
the attempt to predict the future of any given culture. The attempt 
to derive laws of culture, or even to formulate general tendencies, 
implies the need of reconstruction. Such reconstruction in the case 
of primitive peoples without written records is always based on 
incomplete data, and must be made by piecing together the evidence 
from skeletal remains, language, archaeological finds, and cultural 
forms. The relative independence of language, race and culture has 
been established, but there remains the problem of the relation of 
the different elements of culture to each other. Are ritual elements 
more stable than techniques? Are relationship terms more stable 
than moiety divisions ? Are the fields of decoration more stable than 
the elements of the design? Or do all of these elements vary so 
irregularly that no one may be said to be more stable than another ? 
Numberless questions of this character arise in any effort to piece 
together the history of peoples from scanty and fragmentary records. 

Most of the attempts at such reconstruction have assumed one 
element to be more stable than another and drawn conclusions on 
that basis. This assumption may be either implicit in the method or 
expressed. Perhaps the most notable of these efforts are those of 
Graebner! and Rivers”; Graebner using material culture as a point of 
departure, derives his kulturkreise on the basis of a large number 
of observed similarities in different cultures. From the occurrence 
in different parts of the world of similarities of house form or club 
form, no matter how far apart they may be nor how unlikely any 
historical contact between them, he derives proof: of original his- 
torical contact, so that if a sufficient number of such similarities 
are found between Tasmania and Tiera del Fuego, the cultures of 
these two remote spots are argued to have once been part of the same 
underlying kulturkretis. Such a procedure assumed tremendous 
stability in the form of a house or the shape of a club. Rivers, 
assuming that social organization, especially relationship terms. 
and related ritual and religious practices, are the elements of 
culture which are least subject to change, attempts to establish in 


1 Graebner, F., Die Methode der Hihnologie. 
2 Rivers, W. H. R., The History of Melanesian Society. 


12 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


relation to the important Polynesian element of rank. The choice of 
these particular complexes was further dictated by the type of 
material available for Polynesia. 

The Polynesian ethnographic material is exceedingly uneven. 
It is difficult to compare the full and careful records of New Zealand 
and the recent investigations of the Bishop Museum with the 
testimony of travelers, missionaries and garrulous residents in 
other parts of Polynesia. Also, evidence of this latter type is no- 
toriously more untrustworthy and inexact when it relates to the 
social organization and religion of an alien culture than in descrip- 
tions of material culture. The representation of an elaborate Mar- 
quesan tattooing design is subject to the artistic limitations of the 
individual who attempts to reproduce it; but the record of the 
attitude of a Samoan toward the cuttle fish in which he worships 
his god is subject to vitiation not only by lack of skill in the 
recorder, but also by preconceived and hostile religious attitudes. 
Complexes were accordingly chosen where as little of this vitiation 
would occur as possible. Furthermore, the choice of material culture 
complexes makes it possible to use the data of the earliest explorers, 
like Captain Cook, whose short stay and lack of acquaintance with 
the language made it impossible for them to describe any but the 
most external details of the culture. 

The usual cautions concerning negative evidence are particularly 
in force in a field where part of the material is so heterogenous, 
inexpert, and sketchy. Where inferences are drawn from negative 
evidence, this will always be explicitly indicated, together with the 
grounds which seem to make such interpretation plausible in a 
particular instance. Such conclusions can be drawn with some 
margin of safety for the Maori, because the material is so abundant 
that it affords a possibility of checking up. 

The choice of the particular island groups was also dictated by the 
literature available. Unfortunately, the Tongan material collected 
by the Bayard Dominick Expedition is not yet in print. The Pau- 
motuas are still unexplored ground. Therefore, the choice of Hawaii, 
the Marquesas, New Zealand, the Society Islands, and Samoa does 
not claim to be the optimum methodological selection for Polynesia: 
it is simply the only possible choice in the light of the printed 
material. : 

The basic assumption in this study is that the elements under con- 
sideration have been common to the whole area for several hundreds 
of years, during which time they have been undergoing modification 
in each insular group. Such an assumption, however, cannot ignore 
the various theories concerning migration into Polynesia by different. 
racial groups at different times. If different elements in the culture, 
such as curvilinear art or human sacrifices, could with any certainty 
be attributed to a special migration, the problem would be somewhat 
distorted. If the indigenous culture may be conceived as possessing 


Introduction 13 


all of the aspects of the complex, — that is, if some rites and some 
form of decoration may be assumed to have always been associated 
with canoe building, and the intrusive rite or style may be regarded 
as substituted or superimposed, then these aspects may correctly be 
considered the most sensitive and variable. But this is only looking 
at the matter from the point of view of the indigenous culture. If 
instead, the attention were focused upon the immigrant culture, the 
reverse would be true. The artistic style and religious rite which 
alone survived in the later culture, might be considered to be the 
most stable and conservative, while all the other aspects of the 
immigrant culture had made no impression upon the existing form. 
Still a third point of view is possible. If the older complex had 
lacked some of the elements which it now exhibits, — as a definitely 
priestly caste, or any device for building a house door, — these 
might have been accepted from the intrusive culture, and the result 
be a dovetailing of complementary features, no one of which need be 
considered more variable than another. 

The complete resolution of the dilemma depends upon adequate 
data as to the different cultural strata in Polynesia, and this we do 
not have. Sullivan’s! examination of the skeletal material had 
convinced him that there are three different racial strains in the 
present Polynesian population, in addition to extensive Melanesian 
influence in Western Polynesia. These different types are not evenly 
distributed throughout the area, nor throughout the islands of any 
one group. Linton? has attempted to correlate different features of 
culture with the percentage of each racial strain found in each group, 
but such an attempt presupposes a knowledge that we do not have, 
a knowledge of the stability of the elements which he discusses. 
Other theories, based on the study of the mythology® language’, and 
detailed analysis of traditions®, arrive at divergent conclusions. The 
most that they achieve is a possible chronology. If it is recognized 
that the populations of most of the islands contain these different 
racial strains, though in varying proportions, and that the last 
important migrations took place some hundreds of years ago, an 
investigation of the likenesses and dissimilarities of certain com- 
plexes in different parts of the area is justified. This applies to the 
original migrations, but does not hold for later Melanesian influence 
in Western Polynesia. Here, as stated above, the conclusions will 
differ with the point of view, but the approach of this investigation 
is primarily from the standpoint of the indigenous culture, from the 
study of three complexes, with a core which is common to the entire 
1 Nae hemes L., The Racial Diversity of the Polynesian Peoples, A. A. A. 8., 
2 Linton, R., The Material Culture of the Marquesas. 
3 Dixon, R., Oceanic Mythology. 

4 Churchill, W., Sisano. 


5 Fornander, A., The Polynesian Race; Smith, 8. P., Hawaiki; Williamson, 
R. W., The Social and Political Systems of Central Polynesia. 


14 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


group. From this standpoint we shall adjudge those elements most 
stable which show the greatest similarity in the five groups, and 
those least stable which show the greatest dissimilarities, which 
serve best to individualize the different groups and so show them- 
selves most sensitive to modifications and reinterpretations. 

It is recognized that the problem cannot be solved by an inves- 
tigation of one of its aspects in one area with a limited amount of 
material, but upon such intensive studies final solution of the ques- 
tion of stability will have to rest. 


THE CANOE BUILDING COMPLEX 


DESCRIPTION. 


Canoe Building in Hawai. — The Hawaiians had single canoes 
with a single outrigger!, double canoes? with platforms? between 
them, and raft-like vessels built of reeds*. In size they varied from 
24 to 70 feet long®, from one to three feet in width, and they were 
about three feet in depth. The form of the Hawaiian canoe, with 
the exception of the reed vessels, was pointed at both ends, the main 
body of the keel being hewn from a single log. The sides are said 
by Cook* to have consisted of three boards about an inch thick 
which were lashed to the keel. He describes the extremes as raised 
and wedge shaped, but flattened so that the two side boards met for 
over a foot, forming a sort of deck. Emory’ found sterns and bow 
pieces on the island of Lanai which differed from the modern 
canoes, in that these pieces consisted of two parts and also formed 
more of the hull than is usual in extant forms. The parts of the 
canoe were lashed together with sennit; the lashings being slightly 
visible on the outside and more so on the inside®. In the Lanai canoe 
each piece was rabbetted on the lower edge to fit the inside body of the 
canoe’. The outrigger has been very poorly described but seems to 
have been of the simplest variety. Bingham® describes it as having 
a float two-thirds the length of the canoe, with booms varying from 
5 to 10 feet. One end of the float was slightly turned up like a 
sleigh runner, while the other end terminated bluntly like the end oi 
a musket. The connecting booms were curved to meet the float and 
lashed securely to it. The distance from the stern to the rear boom 
was less than the distance between bow and forward boom”, and the 
ends of the booms projected slightly over the other side of the 
canoe", Meinicke!? alone mentions the use of three connecting booms 
instead of two. 


1 Cook, II, p. 253; Bishop, p. 18; Bingham, p. 139. 
2 Bishop, p. 18. 

3 Malo, p. 173; Bishop, p. 22. 

4 Emerson, p. 18. 

5 Cook, supra; Ellis, Journal, p. 255; Jarves, p. 129. 
6 Op. cit. 

7 Page 90. 

8 Linton, p. 450. 

® Bingham, p. 139. 
10 Kmory, p. 90. 

11 Cobb, p. 394. 
12 Meinicke, II, p. 296. 


16 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


When the canoes were rigged double, they were joined by curved 
rods! at a distance of about 6 or 8 feet?. These double canoes car- 
ried a platform variously described as midships®, or in the stern‘. 
Bishop® says the mast was stepped in this platform, but Malo® says 
that it was stepped in the starboard canoe. This platform was 
screened by mats®. Triangular sails woven from pandanus leaves were 
used with point downward. The paddles were oval’ or oblong 
bladed§’. Canoes were provided with a covering of mats to use in 
wet weather’. 

Malo’ distinguished canoes built specially for racing and those 
used primarily for display. The double canoes seem to have been used 
for inter-island communication". 

The work of building a canoe was prefaced by a consultation with 
the divining priest who consulted his god as to the choice of tree. 
The priest and a group of workers then went to the mountains and 
camped by the selected tree; here sacrifices were made to the gods. 
Each step in the felling of the tree and the process of shaping it into 
a hull was preceded by incantations from the priest. When the 
shaping of the log was partially complete, it was hauled down the 
mountain side to a specially constructed shed by the sea side, where 
it was finished and consecrated”. 

It is difficult to distinguish clearly between the priest whose 
incantations and divinations were essential to the success of the un- 
dertaking and the actual craftsmen. Remy depicts the latter as 
a bankrupt and miserableclass, and both Eveleth and Malo” speak 
of the work being done by the common people. But Emerson" speaks 
of distinguished ‘‘canoemen”’ who would seem to have united the 
magic powers of the priest and the skill of the craftsman in one 
person. However, there is no evidence for the existence of a powerful 
and wealthy guild of canoe-builders, such as existed in the Samoan 
group. 

On the other hand, the priest played an extremely important 
part!’. It was he who divined by means of a dream whether the se- 
1 Malo, p. 173; Meares, p. Ll. 

2 Bishop, p. 18. 

3 Kmerson, p. 7. 

4 Bishop, p. 22. 

5 Page 174. 

® Cook, II, p. 253. 

7? Ellis, Journal, p. 256. 
8 Cobb, p. 394. 

® Emerson, p. 9; Malo, p. 174 and p. 179. 
10 Malo, p. 174. 

11 Bishop, p. 22. 

12 Malo, p. 168. 

13 Remy, p. 14. 

14 Page 47. 

15 Page 105. 


16 Page 19. 
17 Malo, pp. 168—172. 


The Canoe Building Complex 17 


lected koa tree was sound. He had to recite the necessary incan- 
tation at each step, wreathe the fallen log with # leaves, raise and 
again impose the specially severe taboos surrounding different 
stages of the work. He also made the finer measurements requisite 
to planning the construction of the canoe; it was he who attached 
the hauling lines, and he alone followed the canoe down the moun- 
tain, chanting. Finally he performed the important launching cere- 
mony. Pupil priestst who desired to become full-fledged canoe- 
hewing priests performed an elaborate series of divination cere- 
monies, and if the auguries received from these ceremonies were 
unfavorable, their masters forbade their continuing in the calling 
under the threat of a supernaturally-induced death penalty. 

The rites connected with canoe building fall under the heads 
of divination practiced by the priest and by the novice, offerings 
and incantations accompanying the different stages of the work 
which included offerings of hogs and red feathers, and the con- 
secration ceremony. Human sacrifices were made occasionally in 
the case of the consecration of a canoe belonging to a particularly 
famous chief?. 

The whole procedure of canoe building was a very taboo affair. 
The strength of the taboo varied from periods of necessary communal 
labor to particular sacred steps such as striking the first blow 
to the prostrate trunk’, attaching the lashings of the outrigger’, 
and the consecration’. The place behind the canoe as it was hauled 
down to the sea was sacred’. Women, however, seem to have been 
present during the initial ceremonies at least*. The most specific 
prohibition imposed by the taboo was against any noise or distur- 
bance®. Transgression of this rule of silence during the lashing of a 
royal canoe was punishable with death®>. Suspension of all work was 
also occasionally ordered at the building of a particularly important 
canoe; — this took the usual Hawaiian form of forbidding fires to 
be lit, or persons to walk abroad or go fishing’. The infraction of the 
taboo of silence during the consecration ceremony meant that the 
canoe would be unlucky®. It was also strictly forbidden to enter a 
canoe on a taboo day’?. 

The chiefs could command the services of the common people in 
canoe building”, and Eveleth™ says the king could collect canoes 


1 Fornander, III, p. 146. 

2 Malo, pp. 168—172. 

3 Young, p. 115. 

4 Malo, p. 169. 

5 Malo, p. 173. 

§ Malo, p. 171. 

7 Emerson, p. 6. 

8 Cheever, p. 87; Bennett, C. C., p. 13. 
® Eveleth, p. 47; Malo, p. 105. 
10 Page 46. 

Young, p. 118. 


2 


18 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


as tribute. Human sacrifices were sometimes made at the building 
of chiefs’ canoes!. A special form of lashings was reserved for the 
canoes of sacred chiefs!. The raised platform was reserved for the 
use of the chiefs”. It was punishable by death to appear on the water 
in a display canoe if a chief were also on the water in a canoet. 
Eveleth? describes a royal procession in which the chiefs were 
carried in canoes on their subjects’ shoulders. Malo* remarks that 
canoe racing was considered as the special prerogative of the chiefs. 

The canoes of the Hawaiian were very little carved. Ellis® says 
that neither canoes nor paddles were carved at all, and Young® — 
confirms: this statement. But Bingham’ mentions “‘pieces of thin 
wood, ingeniously carved’”’ which covered a few feet as a deck and 
turned up some 15 inches at the end. Malo® explicitly refers to 
carved bow and stern pieces, as does the editor in the notes’. 
Greiner” speaks of small human figures carved in wood ‘“‘which 
form fish spear rests on the booms of outrigger canoes.”’ The 
Hawaiians were in the habit of painting their canoes black with the 
exception of the side strakes which were left the natural yellow 
color of the wood!!. But the bulk of the decoration took the form of 
elaborate ornamental lashings, no details of which have survived. 
These lashings were of sennit and used to fasten the outrigger 
booms tothe sides of the canoe! and tothe float. Malo! mentions the 
names of four different patterns, and Emerson! describes one of 
these as: “a highly ornamental piece of weaving, done with differ- 
ent colors of sennit.’’ He also mentions the use of strips of red tapa 
which were flown as streamers from the royal canoes. 

Canoe Building in the Marquesas. — The companion monographs 
by Handy" and Linton", which are the result of the investigation of 
the Bayard Dominick Expedition, furnish us with reliable summaries 
of the older literature referring to the Marquesas, and with as much 
additional material as it was possible to gather. The descriptions 
of the form and construction of the canoes are much more detailed 
and exact than the accounts which are available for some of the 
other island groups, for which a variety of authorities have been 


1 Malo, p. 171. 

2 Malo, p. 108. 

3 Page 69. 

4 Page 103. 

5 Ellis, Journal, p. 256. 

§ Young, p. 118. 

7 Page 82. 

8 Page 104. 

® Malo, p. 178. 

10 Page 35. 

11 Malo, p. 174. 

12 Emerson, p. 15. 

13 Page 16. 

14 The Native Culture of the Marquesas. 
15 The Material Culture of the Marquesas. 


The Canoe Building Complex 19 


cited. Therefore there will be no attempt here to cite earlier author- 
ities; the selections of Handy and Linton will be used in all cases, 
and only such of Linton’s material as is comparable to information 
about other groups will be duplicated here. 

Linton distinguished between two types of canoe, the small 
simple dugout used for fishing and the large built-up canoes. These 
smaller canoes seem to have been merely the keel of the larger 
boats. The natives state that their large canoes were as long as 60 
feet, but there are no records of canoes of this size. War canoes and 
canoes used in exploration were frequently rigged double, with a 
platform, railed-in, in the case of the war canoes, made by bars 
laid on the cross pieces which lashed the canoes together. The single 
canoes were provided with outriggers with an indirect attachment. 

The Marquesan canoe consisted of 9 parts, the underbody, bow 
piece, stern piece, two side planks, and four strips used to cover the 
side seams!. The bow piece made of a single piece of wood usually 
rose at an angle of 20 to 30 degrees’; the side planks were of equal 
thickness with the under body and from a foot to a foot and a half 
in width. They were lashed to the gunwale of the canoe. Occa- 
sionally the sides of the canoe were® constructed of several boards 
instead of only two. The lashings were visible both inside and 
outside*. The seams were caulked with pads of cocoa-nut husk; and 
feathers were used in the caulking near the ends of the canoe. These 
seams were covered with strips of wood, the outside strips running 
the length of the canoe, and the inside strips only covering the inner 
ends of bow and stern. 

The outrigger was of the indirect type. The booms were pane 
two in number, occasionally three.The right ends of the booms pro- 
jected beyond the sides of the canoe. The left ends were attached to 
the float by means of four or six small sticks. “When four sticks were 
used they were placed two on either side of the cross piece, and the 
lower ends of each pair rested together; the upper ends being some 
inches apart, forming what is known as the ‘V’ attachment.” Linton 
describes a canoe model in the Peabody Museum with a direct 
attachment, but this may be due to the small size of the model. 
Porter® and Quiros® report the use of double outriggers. Alexander’ 
reports an outrigger seen on a fishing canoe in 1898 in which each 
of the two booms are thrust through square pieces of wood, and 
strengthened by U shaped pieces of wood in the outside angle in the 
attachment of the booms to the float’. 

1 Linton. 

2 Linton and Edge-Partington: 3rd Series, No. 26. 

3 Handy, p. 157; Forster, G.: A Voyage Around The World. II, p. 8. 
4 Linton, p. 450. 

5 Page 102. 

6 Page 28, quoted by Linton. 

7 Page 745. 


8 This type is essentially the same as the North Java type. Vide Hornell, J.: 
The Outrigger Canoe of Indonesia, p. 110. 


2% 


20 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Sails were of the inverted, triangular type, of cocoa-nut leaf 
or possibly pandanus. The large double war canoes carried two 
sails, the masts being stepped in the forward end of each hull. 
This was the usual way of stepping the mast, by passing it up 
through one of the forward seats}. 

Marquesan canoes had platforms but no houses; the platform was 
formed of eight poles, the four lower poles being lashed to the four 
upper and also to the canoe. Porter? mentions a special central 
platform for the chief, and Stewart’ speaks of a platform of small 
sticks. The Marquesans had war and travelling canoes, fishing 
canoes and ceremonial propitiatory canoes. 

Paddles were distinguished by the presence of a knob below the 
blade which was connected with the blade by a short neck which 
curved upwards and backwards. 

Handy has provided a detailed description of canoe building; 
the canoe builder, his assistants, and the priest went up into the 
valley where the selected tree stood. Here the priest chanted, the 
tree was felled, and no further work was done the first day. The 
second day the shaping of the canoe began; a temporary shed was 
erected for the accommodation of the workers. All the work on the 
hull was completed here; then the canoe was carried down to the sea 
where another house waited to receive it..Here the outrigger was 
made and atta’ hed. The house, the canoe itself, and the canoe 
builders were all decorated. 

The canoe builders® in the Marquesas are distinguished from the 
priests who recited the ceremonial chants. The chief builders acted 
as supervisors, leaving most of the work to the friends and relatives 
of the owners. The owner built a house for those engaged in the 
construction of the canoe and provided them with food. They were 
paid in food, cloth, and ornaments. Skilled canoe builders often 
obtained great wealth and prestige. A man might become a skilled 
workman by inheriting his father’s occupation and receiving 
training from him, or he might go through an apprenticeship. 

The “‘ceremonial priest who chanted the Pu’e’’, or creation chant, 
officiated before the tree was felled’, while it was being hauled down 
the mountain, and just before it was launched. The same chant 
seems to have been used on all of these occasions. 

The rites associated’? with canoe building, in addition to the 
chanting of the Pu’e, consisted in a ceremonial decoration of the 
canoe house, canoe, and crew, and human sacrifices in the case of a 


1 Linton, pp. 102—3. 

2 Porter, p. 101. . 

3 Stewart, C. C.: A Visit To The South Seas, etc. pp. 211—212. 

4 Coan, p. 206. 

i: ne pp. 314—5. Similar knobs occur in Mangareva and Easter Island. 
andy. 

7 Handy, pp. 154—6. 


The Canoe Building Complex 21 


war canoe. These sacrifices were obtained by raids, made either be- 
fore the canoe was launched, or soon afterwards in the canoe itself, 
to prove its mana. Sometimes a famous warrior slept in an unfinished 
canoe to give it mana‘!. Canoes were intimately associated with 
death in the Marquesas: coffins were often canoe-shaped, and un- 
decorated”. The soul was supposed to sail away in a canoe’, and 
the bodies of dead priests were placed in life-size canoes with sacri- 
ficial victims, whose function it was to row the souls to the land 
of the dead*. A ceremony was held in which a canoe, containing a 
small round house on a platform, a live dog, pig, and cock, bread- 
fruit, etc., was launched upon the sea to put an end to a six-week’s 
mourning taboo?. 

All important work in the Marquesas was taboo. Special houses 
were erected for the canoe builders and they were denied all asso- 
ciation with women until they had been made ‘“‘free’”’ by bathing or 
incantations. The sacred work-house was burnt®. War and fishing 
canoes were taboo to all women, except priestesses and chieftainesses’, 
and women were not permitted to enter the water of a lake on which 
a canoe floated®. 

Handy says that the skilled workmen and priests, the tuhuna, 
formed a class by themselves, and were respected and counted upon 
for help by the chiefs. Rank in the Marquesas, according to Handy, 
was largely a question of wealth, and the size of achief’s canoe 
might therefore be explained by his rank or by his wealth. Taboo 
women were not subject to the restrictions relating to fishing and 
war canoes. Chiefs and important priests had to have dead men to 
paddle their souls to Havai’i. There seems to have been no definite 
type of canoe reserved for chiefs. ““The information given by modern 
natives’, says Handy, “led me to believe that a large canoe was 
always the property of the chief of the tribe’. Porter® relates that 
large canoes were often taken apart, different sections being owned 
and housed by different families. Handy reports that on Ua Pou the 
chief’s war canoe was sometimes, if not always, kept on the feast 
place before the chief’s house. 

Permanent decoration of the canoes consisted of ornamental 
sennit lashings and of carvings. The designs for the lashings were taken 
from string figures. The bow and stern pieces, and often the side 
pieces of the large canoes were carved. The figure head consisted 


1 Linton, p. 302. 

2 Handy, p. 211. 

3 Fraser, p. 363. 

4 Porter, pp. 110—l. 

5 Coan, p. 206. 

6 Handy, p. 143. 

7 Op. cit., p. 156. 

8 Melville, H.; The Marquesas Islands, p. 147. 
® Page 101. | 


22 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


of a single t#ki face’. There was also a tendency to decorate the 
neck of the bow piece with carving in high relief, or sometimes by 
attaching separate figures*, which faced in toward the canoe. The 
ancient form of the carving on the sides was angular geometric®; the 
more recent canoe models show a more liberal use of ovals. The de- 
signs were inscribed between zones, defined by paralled lines, which 
run “‘transversely to the long axis of the canoe.” T7ki figures are 
rare and have five fingers. A canoe model showing a tiny human 
figure, knees flexed, is pictured by Edge Partington. The paddles 
were also carved, the knobs into tk: figures, the upper and lower 
surfaces into several decorated zones*. The longitudinal strips, 
covering the outside seams, were painted black, and ornamented at 
each lashing with tufts of white feathers. Temporary decorations 
consisted of cocoa-nut fronds, placed so that their ends trailed in the 
water, skulls®, possibly coral and pear! shells, and cords upon which 
were strung tufts of human hair. 

Maori Canoe Building. — In describing Maori canoes several 
difficulties occur. In the first place, early travelers do not distinguish 
clearly between the different areas in New Zealand, although later 
research® has shown that there are important differences between 
the material culture of different parts of the islands. In the second 
place, the Maori canoe underwent a decided modification soon after 
Cook’s visit, and before the arrival of later observers. Tasman, 
whose principal stay was at South Island’ reports only double 
canoes’, but in 1770, Cook® speaks of some canoes being joined 
together, and of the use of outriggings. But in 1840 Polack”, a most 
careful observer, could say that outriggers were unknown in New 
Zealand. The early double canoes were said to have been either 
connected by cross bars which left from two to two and a half feet 
between the hulls, or to have been only thirty inches apart", and the 
only information we have about the outrigger is based on a single 
archaeological find of a float with perforations which suggest the 
possibility of a stick attachment similar to that found today in 
Tahiti!?. These early outrigger canoes, according to the descriptions 
in the mythology", were built of several boards lashed together, 
rather than the single strake characteristic of the historical type of 


1 The typical Polynesian conventionalization of the human figure. 
2 Model in Peabody Museum, Salem. 

3 Greiner, pp. 115—117. 

4 Linton, p. 311. 

5 Porter, p. 102. 

6 Skinner, J. P. S., Vol. XXX, pp. 77—78. 

? Colenso, T. N. Z. I., 1894, p. 400. 

. § Tasman, p. 106. 

® Cook, I, p. 193. 

10 Polack, I, p. 224. 

11 Best, T. N. Z. I., Vol., 48, p. 449. 

12 Skinner, H. D., Records of the Canterbury Museum, IT, pt.4, pp. 151—162. 
13 Best, T. N. Z. I., Vol. 48, p. 452. | 


The Canoe Building Complex 23 


Maori canoe. These ancient canoes carried platforms on which 
awnings were erected!. 

The Maoris also used a raft-like craft, constructed of bulrushes, 
similar to that found in the Chatham Islands?, but this was only 
used as a makeshift®. These were sometimes 50 or 60 feet long’. 
Best? figures a raft-like craft from the east coast, in which the body 
is formed of five logs, bound together, to which an outrigger-like 
structure of three logs is connected by three booms, which bears a 
resemblance to the Samoan amatasi. 

The typical Maori canoe of historical times was built on the 
dugout plan®. The keel was usually hewn in two or three parts later 
dovetailed together, and an immense strake 15 or 20 inches wide 
produced the desired height’. These side strakes were lashed to the 
keel with cords of flax, the lashing being visible on both sides®, and 
caulked with down’. The seams were covered with battens which 
were also very long and jointed only once or twice®. The battens 
were attached by flax cords, each tie being decorated with tufts 
of white feathers. The stern and bow pieces were hewn out of single 
blocks of wood and attached separately”. A grating was fastened 
along the bottom of the canoe on which the rowers knelt, and 
carved braces were lashed across the canoe". Savage! mentions 
partitions dividing canoes owned by two families. The sails were 
triangular!*, point downwards, the largest canoes carrying two. 
They were woven of bulrush leaves or of Freycinetia Banksii and 
flax leaves, or cordyline; provided with mast and boom; the mast 
was stepped in the hull. The stays were of flax!*. The paddles were 
from 4 to 5 feet long!’, and usually leaf-shaped, tapering to a point — 
although the use of paddles for steering and as truncheons produced 
many variants!*. They were often decorated with a carved tzki at the 
top and with painted or carved patterns on the blade. The blade is 
often thickened at the distal point?®. 


1 Best, T. N. Z. I., Vol. 48, p. 452. 

* Skinner, Material Culture of the Morioris, passim. 
3 Best, Maori Canoe, p. 140. 

4 Tregear, p. 121. 

5 Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 71, p. 136. 

6 Best, op. cit., pp. 171—173; Cowan, p. 182. 

7 Tregear, p. 117. 

8 Best, op. cit., p. 79; Linton, p. 450. 

9 Barstow, T. N. Z. I., Vol. II, p. 74; Best, op. cit., p. 83. 
10 Hamilton, p. 11. 

11 Tregear, p. 118. 

12 Op. cit., p. 63. 

ee OD. cit. pi 120. 

14 Best, op. cit., pp. 179—184. Buller, p. 228. 

15 Best, loc. cit.; Tregear, p. 120. 

16 Hamilton, p. 14, and diagrams. 

17 Best, op. cit., p. 187; Polack, II, p. 221. 

18 Best, op. cit., p. 163. 


24 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Division of Maori canoes by function or by type of decoration 
produces identical classifications. The war canoes were most fully 
and elaborately carved; those used for traveling and fishing were 
plainer, with a figure-head of a human face with protruding tongue; 
and there was a rougher canoe, usually uncarved, but sometimes 
painted!. The largest canoes were built for war, but the other two 
types were not distinguished as to size. 

The tree was felled by fire and partly shaped where it fell. Crops 
had been planted near the tree to feed the workers. Elaborate 
ceremonies preceded each step. The partly completed canoe was 
then hauled to the shore over skids and placed in a canoe-house, 
where the work of construction was finished. A large carved canoe 
was sometimes not completed for years. There was a special cere- 
mony of launching?. 

The high development of painting and carving among the Maori 
produced considerable division of labor. Polack? says that carpen- 
ters, flax dressers, rope makers, painters, carvers, caulkers, and 
sail makers were employed on a large canoe, but this division can 
hardly be taken very seriously. The most important craft functions 
seem to have been those of planning the canoe and of decorating it. 
In connection with designing the canoe, a small model was made and 
submitted to the future owners (a chief or a community)’. Tribal 
specialization existed in the different types of decoration, and raids 
were sometimes made to obtain slaves, skilled in a particular style 
of carving. Parts of the work had to be done by men of rank, — 
notably, the refurbishing of canoes which had been used for war, 
and special parts of the shaping of the hull*. No record of the forms 
of hiring the workers or of the type of payment survives. Barstow® 
suggests that barter for canoes or for services connected with canoe 
building is a new development. The bulk of the heavy work was 
done by slaves’. 

It was the duty of the priest to see that the proper incantations 
were recited at each stage of the work’. He had to be consulted as to 
an auspicious day for beginning the work, — the penalty for an 
inauspicious beginning being bad luck for the canoe®. He recited at 
least seven incantations, — at the felling of the tree, to give power 
to the axes to shape the canoe, at the hauling of the canoe out of the 
bush, to make the heavens propitious at the beginning of a journey, 
to calm the sea, and on the arrival of a canoe in a strange land. 


1 Barstow, p. 72; Best, op. cit., p. 6; Hamilton, p. 4; Tregear, pp. 119—120. 
2 'Tregear, pp. 116—119. . 

3 Op. cit., p. 224. 

4 Barstow, p. 72. 

5 Karle, p. 94. 

it SMT oF 

? Anderson, p. 310. 

8 Hamilton, p. 9; Best, The Maori Canoe, III, passim. 

® Barstow, p. 75. 


The Canoe Building Complex 25 


There was also an incantation to give time to the paddles. The 
priest burnt the first chips in a sacred fire’, and finally he performed 
the launching ceremony”. A sacred seat was reserved for the high 
priest in the bow of the canoe’. | 

Rank among the Maori was so interwoven with the notion of 
religious power that it is difficult to treat the two separately. Chiefs 
instead of being exempted from labor were required to perform part 
of the work*. Only men who possessed supernatural power by virtue 
of birth might take part in felling the tree and shaping the hull>. 
When a human sacrifice was needed before felling the tree for a 
particularly sacred canoe, it was a chief’s son who was chosen’. 
For the launching sacrifice, a slave was chosen®. The stern seat was 
reserved for distinguished persons’. Barstow® speaks of canoes being 
ordered and owned by individual chiefs, but there is no record of 
form or type of decoration peculiar to such canoes. 

The varied rites associated with canoe building may be divided 
into: divination of an auspicious day’, (a divination ceremony based 
on observations of the position of the sun and moon), rites to pro- 
_ pitiate the forest deities, to ensure the successful construction, 
transportation, and launching of the canoe, and ceremonies to give 
the canoe mana. Best™! records a ceremony for removing the taboo 
from the tree in which the chosen tree is ceremonially struck with a 
leaf shaped like an adze blade while a long invocation is recited. 
At the end of this invocation one chip was struck from the tree and 
this chip was carried away and burned out of hearing of the chopper’s 
axe. The rest of the chips were kindled and a ceremonial meal 
cooked on thefire. According to Anderson! there was a ceremony for 
freeing the whole sacred grove from taboo before a tree could be cut. 
When the first chips flew from the axe, they were kindled by the 
priest in a sacred fire, on which a sweet potato was roasted. This 
potato was then placed in the gap which was left by the chips, and 
then removed to some hollow tree nearby, taking the sacredness of 
the chosen tree with it. This hollow tree now became taboo, until 
the completion of the canoe. A hauling ceremony described by Best** 
consisted in the preparation of two sets of food, one by a priest for 
the male element, eaten by the old men, and the other by a priestess 


1 Cowan, p. 180. 

2 Tregear, p. 119. 

3 Cowan, p. 49. 

4 Tregear, p. 117; Earle, p. 94. 
5 Anderson, loe. cit. 

§ Barstow, p. 76. 

? Tregear, p. 121. 

8 Op. cit., p. 72. 

9 Barstow, p. 73. 

10 Tregear, p. 116. 

11 Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 44. 
12 Anderson, p. 310. 

13 Best, The Maorz Canoe, p. 68. 


26 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


for the female element, consumed by the old women. It was also 
customary to place fern fronds over the stump to hide the wounds 
of Tane!. Human sacrifices were offered when the tree was felled 
in the case of sacred canoes”, and one or more victims were sacrificed 
at the launching ceremony. Barstow® speaks of these victims being 
eaten. Best‘ believes that actual human sacrifice of a ritualistic 
character was not the usual practice, and if it was made, the body, 
being that of a relative who had volunteered for the service, was not 
eaten. Sometimes the heart of a sacrificed sparrow hawk was sub- 
stituted. According to Tregear canoes carried shrines at which 
offerings were made to the gods. The fate of an important canoe® 
was divined by a ceremony in which a priest consecrated a certain 
shrub to this purpose and then pulled it up; if the roots came up 
intact, the omen was propitious. The taboo was lifted from the 
vessel by the priest’s striking the figure head with this shrub. As a 
completion of the rite a priestess mounted the canoe and rendered it 
common by contact with the female element. Sometimes the people 
sang a welcome chant to the canoe. All parts of the canoe were 
named®. Canoes were also associated with death among the Maori. 
Tregear’ speaks of the corpse of a chief being laid on a canoe which 
was painted red and set up in the forest. Best® says a canoe was 
sometimes cut up after the death of its chiefly owner and part of it 
set up in the forest as a cenotaph. This was also done with a capsized 
canoe later drifting ashore as a monument to those who had been 
drowned. A canoe which had carried a dead body was taboo, and 
being useless was left on the grave. Angas? mentions finding in a 
cemetery a small model canoe, containing the property of a deceased 
chief. The ceremony of a propitiatory canoe has also been recorded 
for the Maori’®. In this case, however, a small bulrush canoe, con- 
taining stones to represent men and cooked and uncooked food was 
set adrift. 

The taboo surrounding canoe building was very rigid, but it 
differed from the Hawaiian and Marquesan type as women were 
_ allowed to approach the place where the tree was cut, the priestess 
participated in the ceremonies, and continence was not enjoined. 
Special trees were tabooed for future use, sometimes being tabooed 
for the use of ason!!. Whole groves were also set apart as sacred for 


1 Cowan, pp. 180—181. 

2 Tregear, p. 119. 

3 Anderson, p. 315; Barstow, p. 76 
4 Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 112. 
5 Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 114. 
6 Best, p. 452; Barstow, p. 76. 

: Tregear, p- 393. 

8 Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 32. 

* Vol 2. pe. il 

10 Tregear, p. 219. 

11 Barstow, p. 72. 


The Canoe Building Comgqle« Pai 


the use of canoe building'. The ceremonies for removing the taboo 
from a special tree and from the completed canoe have been described 
above. Food was not permitted to be eaten on the taboo quarterdeck 
of a traveling canoe”; and no food might be carried on a war vessel 
or a fishing canoe. The canoes of the great migration are said to have 
carried special canoes as tenders to convey the food. 

The decoration? of Maori canoes falls in two classes, permanent 
and temporary. The permanent decorations were both carved and 
painted. The most elaborate vessels were richly carved, while the 
small fishing canoes were often merely painted. The bow and stern 
pieces were carved from single blocks of wood and the positions of 
the human figures they embodied were carefully stylized. The stern 
piece was from six to fifteen feet high and about fifteen inches 
across, and rose almost perpendicularly; the bow piece was about 
six to ten feet long and about two feet across’. 

At the base of the stern piece was a small carved figure, looking 
into the canoe, and above it at the termination of the two strength- 
ening ribs was carved a still smaller figure. The whole stern piece 
was carved in a delicate filigree pattern of double spirals. The figure- 
head consisted of a human figure, facing forward, and a mid-rib 
running back from the figure, carved in the same elaborate filigree 
as the stern piece. Behind the transverse slab terminating the fili- 
gree there was often a small human figure facing the canoe. On the 
flat part of the bow piece, beneath the filigree, lay the prostrate 
figure of Maui. This figure-head was occasionally constructed of 
two pieces, — the vertical mid-board was then grooved into the 
block®. The thwarts and strakes were also carved. The second class 
canoes had a figure-head with protruding tongue, which was less 
elevated than in the case of the war canoes®. The forward and aft 
sections of the body of the canoe were elaborately decorated with 
painted spirals and patterns resembling those of the thigh tattooing 
in red, black and white’. The second class canoe was painted red®, 
and the third class boasted neither top sides nor carved stern and — 
bow piece. The battens which covered the seams were painted black 
and decorated with white feathers*. Rutherford? mentions the use 
of pear! shells set in the carved work, and the model in the American 
Museum shows these also. 

The temporary ornaments consisted of feathers fastened to 
ropes, which streamed from the top of the stern to the surface of the 


1 Anderson, p. 310. 

2 'Tregear, p. 121. 

3 Best, op. cit., p. 6; pp. 93—106. 

bs Hamilton, p- 411 ° 
~ Anderson, pp. 313— 314. 

6 Hamilton, Plates. 

7 Hamilton, p. 15; Polack, IT, p. 220. 

8 Hamilton, p. 13. 

® The New Zealanders, p. 272. 


28 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia — 


water. The prow was ornamented by two long curving wands, 
resembling antennae, tufted with albatross feathers?. 

Canoe Building In Tahiti?. — The Tahitians used two types of 
canoes, one for short excursions which was wall-sided and flat 
bottomed; the other for long voyages was bow-sided and sharp- 
bottomed’. There were two types of double canoes, one used only by 
chiefs, the usual small outrigger canoe; and the large outrigger 
canoe, which carried a house, and was used for inter-island com- 
munication’. The double canoes® were formed by lashing two canoes 
together, and carried a platform containing a small house®, with a 
roof of reeds’. These double canoes had high sterns and bow pieces, 
the latter of which were sometimes joined together in a ladder-like 
formation’. The double canoes used for war had low, covered sterns*, 
and a platform projecting over the bow on which the warriors 
stood’, but occasionally these had high sterns also. Cook? describes 
this platform as being raised on posts. The single outrigger canoes 
had a slightly curving, slender stern, and a horizontal projecting 
bow”, or occasionally a high bow also! ¥. 


1 Hamilton p. 13. 

2 The discussionof technological features will take in the whole group of the 
Society Islands, but the ritualistic features are probably only absolutely 
true for Tahiti, though Ellis often generalized. 

Cook, Vol. I, p. 97, says, ‘““The Invahas are the only boats used by the in- 
habitants of Otaheite; but we saw several pahis that came from other 
islands.”’ 

Ellis, Volume I, p. 181, says, ‘““The natives of the eastern islands fre- 
quently camedown to the Society Islands in large double canoes, whichthe 
Tahitians dignify with the name of pahi, the name for ship.” (But on page 
167, he uses pahi to mean war canoe.) ‘““They are built with much smaller 
pieces of wood than those employed in the structure of the Tahitian canoes, 
as the low coralline islands produce but very small kinds of timber, yet they 
are much superior both for strength, convenience, and sustaining a tempest 
at sea. They are always double, and one canoe has a permanent covered 
residence for the crew. The two masts are also stationary, and a kind of 
ladder or wooden shroud,”’ (Vide Edge-Partington, No. 30), ““extends from 
the sides to the head of the mast. The sails are large and made with fine 
matting. Several of the principal chiefs possess a paht paumopu, which 
they use as a more safe and convenient mode of conveyance than their own 
canoes. One canoe that brought over a chief from Rurutu, upwards of 300 
miles, was very large. It was somewhat in the shape of a crescent, the stem 
and stern high and pointed, and the sides deep; the depth from the upper 
edge to the middle of the keel was not less than 12 feet.” 

8 Cook, I., pp. 95—96. 

4 Ellis, Researches, I, p. 170. 

. Hugenin, p. 202; Ellis I, p. 164; Bougainville, ee 266. 

6 Kdge- Partington, Series I, No. 30; Cook I, p. 9 

? Bougainville, p. 260. 

8 Ellis, I, p. 165, ° 

9 Wilson, J., p. 378. 

10 Cook, I, p. 47. 

11 Edge-Partington, Series I, No. 29. 

12 Christian, pp. 199—200, discusses three types: ‘““The va’a or ordinary 
canoe of small size.’’ ‘“The a’ria or double canoe.” “The pahi, or raft 
boat, which somewhat resembles the balsa of ancient Peru, and the cata- 


The Canoe Building Complex 29 


Three variations occurred in the construction of the keel. The 
war canoes were flat sided, the sides consisting of but one broad 
plank lashed to the keel. The hull of the double canoe on the other 
hand resembled in cross sections the print of a spade’, on a playing- 
card. The island-canoes had extra wash-boards on each side®. The 
canoes varied from 10 to 72 feet in length, but the greatest width 
was about three feet”, and they were from three to four feet deep?. 
The platforms were sometimes ten or twelve feet long, and even 
wider, the house five or six by six or seven feet. The stern sometimes 
rose as high as twenty-four feet*. The hull of most of the canoes was 
built up of a number of planks sewed together with sinnet, and 
caulked with cocoa-husks and bread-fruit gum®. There is some doubt 
as to whether this sewing was visible or invisible®. The keel itself was 
often made in several pieces*; the bow was formed of a solid piece 
which formed the front of the hull also. The sterns were slender, 
curving posts, sometimes joined together‘ ®. 

The characteristic form of the Tahitian outrigger is a weaker 
development of the stern boom. The bow boom extends further, 
over the right side of the canoe’, and is a curved piece, which Ellis® 
describes as elastic, and Hugenin® as forming an arc. The attach- 
ment of the bow boom is the double V attachment; the sticks are 
sunk into perforations in the float, bent in until they lie flat against 
the float, and lashed in place with sennit; “‘the cord passing through 
the perforations in the float and back to a point on the boom 
inboard from the stick”. The stern boom might be directly 
inserted, tied!!, or tied to a very small peg!, inserted in the float”. 
Cook gives the length of the boom as six to ten feet!*; Bougainville 
as four to five feet. 


marans of the Chatham Islands, also called pahi by the natives, the con- 
struction of which allows the water to wash through the body of the 
vessel.... The Tahitian pahi was often quite 80 feet in length, broad in 
the middle, very carefully and neatly planked over inside, forming a 
sort of rude bulkhead or inner casing and had a lofty carved stern rising 
up into one or two substantial posts.’ (This last description suggests 
European influence, but he states specifically on page 199 that ““When 
Europeans came to Tahiti there were three sorts of vessels in use.’’) 

1 Wilson, p. 378. 

2 Cook, I, pp. 95—97; Wilson, p, 377. 

3 Ellis I, p. 169. 

4 Wilson, p. 377. 

5 Ellis I, p, 165; Tyerman and Bennett, p. 256. 

6 Linton, p. 450; Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 86. 

7 Ellis I, p. 171; A. M. N. H. model 80. 0/3045 a, and 80.0/3054; Hugenin, 
p. 200; Bougainville, p. 259. 

6 Hilts, I. p. 171, 

® Hugenin, p. 200. 

10 Skinner, H. D., ‘‘ The Outrigger in NewZealand and Tahiti,” J. PS, Vol. 36, 
p. 363. 

11 A, M. N. H. Model 80.0/3045a, 

12 A, M. N. H. Model 80.0/3054. 

13 Cook, p. 196. 

14 Page 259. 


30 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


A peculiar feature of the Tahitian canoe is the development of — 
the projection of the major outrigger boom beyond the opposite side 
of the canoe. Ellis? describes this board as projecting five or six 
feet, and elevated four or five feet above the water, having a railing 
along the side. Upon this a native stood in rough weather, to 
balance the canoe! ,°. Wilson‘ describes this as being a stage two feet 
wide and ten or twelve feet long; and Forster’s drawing® shows this 
board as additional to the outrigger boom. All the descriptions 
mention tying the shrouds to this projection. It undoubtedly is a 
variant of the “weather platform” found in Samoa. Canoes over 25 
feet long carried sail®; the mast was less than the length of the 
canoe. Double canoes carried two masts’; the sails were of the 
inverted triangle shape, but differed from those of Eastern Polynesia 
in having the upper end of the boom recurved’. They were woven of 
pandanus leaves’ and surrounded by a frame of wood®. The sails 
of the island-canoe resembled half an oval, with the straight side 
placed next to the mast®. The mast was stepped in a batten placed 
across the canoe’, nearly amidship in single canoes, and about one- 
third from the end in doublecanoes”. Hugenin"™ pictures and Wilson” 
describes an extra sprit ‘laced up and down the after leech, and 
reaching one-third higher than the mast head.” The paddles were 
plain and oblong bladed!” with a knob at the end of the blade’. 

Functionally Ellis!* distinguishes between traveling and fishing 
canoes, war canoes, the special double canoes used by the chiefs, and 
the sacred canoes of the priests. 

The trees for canoe building were cut down and partly shaped in 
the mountains; then brought down to the shores and finished in a 
special shed. All the parts were fitted together first, and then 
taken apart, and rubbed with sand and coral. Wilson” gives a 
detailed account of the building of the war and sacred canoes. These 
were built by a general levy passed down from chiefs through their 
landholders to the tenants, who provided the material to pay the 
workmen and the labor for the heavier parts of the work. Feasts 
were made at several stages of the work. 


1 Page 259. 

2 Ellis, I, p. 171. 

ATO rals 

4 Page 379. 

5 Forster, J., p. 460. 

6 Cook, I, p. 96. 

? Ellis, I, p. 174. 

8 Linton, p, 317, 

® Ellis, I, p. 174; Cook, I, p. 47. 
x0 Wilson, deDs 379. 

11 Page 201. 

12 Ellis, I, p. 171; Cook, I, pp. 95—97. 
13 Forster, G., Vol. II, p. 8. 

14 Ellis, I, p, 175. 

15 Pages 377—8. 


The Canoe Building Complex 31 


There was a special group of carpenters! and some division of 
labor?, especially in the ornamentation and sail making. Some of 
the canoe builders were attached to the services of the principal 
chiefs, while others were especially hired, paid with hogs and cloth, 
and fed and housed by the owner, during the construction of the 
canoe. The account of the feasts given at each stage of the work 
suggest the Samoan type of payment, but Wilson rather emphasises 
the religious aspect. 

The priest seems to have officiated at each of these ceremonies’, 
and the consecration took place at the altar of the chief in whose 
district the canoe was built. At the consecration of one of the sacred 
canoes, (these contained houses and shrines with images of the gods 
decorated with red feathers)* the king officiated also. 

The accompanying rites consisted of prayers to the gods of the 
craft® and of the chief®, and to “‘Eatoo’’; these were offered before the 
tree was cut down, at the commencement of the construction, and 
when each layer was made fast’. When the canoe was finished, hogs 
were strangled and offered at the altar, accompanied by young 
plantain trees. The entrails were eaten and the rest of the flesh left to 
putrefy. At the consecration of the sacred canoes, they were deco- 
rated with cloth, breastplates and red feathers, and hauled to the 
mara’. On this occasion a human victim was offered. The eye of the 
victim was offered in pantomime to the king, and the body interred 
in the marav. Hogs were also offered, and the decorations of the canoe 
were presented to the king. Canoes so consecrated were afterwards 
sacred to the services of the god®. The canoes of the Areois society 
contained special altars®. Canoes were named after some particular 
event in which they had played a part”. 

The chief conducted the building of large canoes on the basis 
of a feudal levy!!, which passed down through the landed farmers 
tothetenants. Chiefs used a special type of double canoe!”. When a 
canoe was built, sacrifices were offered to the gods of the chief. 
The chief occupied the house built on the platform of the canoe, 
which could be taken apart and taken ashore for the chief’s use. 
The ‘‘king’’, or sacred chief, took part in the consecration of the 


1 Wilson, pp. 377—8, 

2 Hillis, I., pp. 175. 

3 Ellis, I, p. 176. 

4'Tyerman and Bennett, I, p. 244; Ellis, I, p, 169. 
5 Moerenhout, Vol. I, p. 252. 

6 Ellis, p. 176. 

7 Wilson, pp. 378—79. 

8 Sacred place, sometimes stone enclosure containing altar. 
9 Ellis, I, p. 316. 

10 Ellis, I, p. 163. 
11 Wilson, J., p. 378. 
12 Ellis, I, p. 169. 
13 Cook, I, p. 196; Wilson, pp. 377—79. 


32 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


sacred canoes. Ellis! says the rank and dignity of a chief were indi- 
cated by the size of the canoe, the decorations, and the number of 
rowers. 

There is no mention of a taboo connected with building a canoe?. 
When men and women traveled, their food was carried in separate 
canoes?®. 

The permanent decorations of the canoe consisted of carvings 
on the stern and bow pieces. The body of the canoe was not orna- 
mented‘. The stern pieces were very slender and carved in the round, 
with one small figure above another®. Those of war canoes had a 
human head or other grotesque figure on the figure-head and a 
bird’s head on the stern. These carvings were more realistic than 
those of the Maori or the Marquesan and there was much less atten- 
tion given to incidental ornamental detail. 

Canoe Building In Samoa’, — The Samoan canoe had been so 
modified by borrowing from Fiji, by way of Tonga, that scarcely 
any of the original canoes were extant at the time of discovery’. The 
modification introduced from Fiji was the permanent attachment of 
two canoes, one smaller than the other’, upon which a permanent 
platform extended in such a way as to give the appearance of a raft, 
supported by two keels. Samoa shared with Fiji, Tonga and the 
smaller islands in the Society Group the manufacture of canoes out 
of many pieces, joined by sennit sewing. The discrepancy between 
the size of the two canoes is believed by Best® to have been char- 
acteristic of the original Samoan double canoe. The Samoans had 
also large single canoes with single outriggers”, a small outrigger 
canoe, and Kramer and Demandt treat the bonito boat separately”, 
although it is really only a small outrigger canoe!!. The Samoan 
single canoe had a sharp cut-water!!, but this does not seem to have 
been the case with the two canoes in the case of the double canoe: 
these show a slow upward curve to a broad blunt bow and stern. 
The larger canoes were not built up from a dug-out log by the addi- 
tion of side-pieces, but were sewn together by a method of sennit 
lashes which rendered the seams invisible from the outside. This 
was accomplished by leaving the edges of the constituent board 


wai Bs oP hf 2 

2 Tyerman and Bennett, II, p. 53, mention a man and a woman working on 
a canoe but this was in 1821, and may not be significant. 

3 Wilson, J., p : 

4 Ellis, I, K 175. 

5 Ellis, I, 168; Wilkes, I, p. 279; Forster, J., p. 459; Edge- Partington, 
Series I. No: 30. 

6 Statements to which no footnotes are appended are based upon the author’s 
own field work in Samoa, 

? Thompson, B., p, 294; Brown, G., p. 340. 

8 Kramer, II, p. 251; A. M. N. H. Model 80. 0/115a. 

® Op. cit., p. 449, 

10 Demandt, p. 72; A. M. N. H. Model 80.0/3016a; Kramer, II, p, 243. 

11 Kramer, U, p- 253; Hood, p. 406; Demandt, p. 73. 


The Canoe Building Complex 33 


thicker than the rest of the board. (These boards were of irregular 
size and shape.) The stitches passed through the protuberant rims!, 
left at the edge of the boards. The edges of the boards were fitted 
carefully together”, the seams being caulked with bread-fruit gum’. 

The outrigger was usually of the type known as the indirect V 
attachment. There were sometimes two, and sometimes three 
booms, and these were strengthened by cross pieces or diagonal 
poles. In addition to the short sticks forming the double V, cords 
connected the float with these cross bars*. Demandt’s® figures of the 
bonito boat show two booms, and an abortive one which does 
not quite touch the float. The float was pointed only at the forward 
end, and was triangular in cross section®. It was attached so that the 
distance from the rear end of the float to the stern end of the canoe 
was less than that from the forward end of the float to the bow of 
the canoe. Kramer’ gives diagrams of a direct inserted attachment, 
formed by the use of a curved boom. It is notable that while the 
Samoans borrowed Fijian raft-like boats, they did not borrow the 
Fijian technique for overcoming the one-way limitations of the 
single outrigger by changing the position of the mast®. Instead they 
developed a “‘weather platform®,” a narrow rim, or extending board 
on which the native stood to balance the canoe in rough weather. 
This may be a very crude form of the heavily buttressed projecting 
side of the Marshall Island canoe”. The platform’ on the Samoan 
canoe was raised on heavy transverse blocks of wood; the floor 
consisted of wide planks lashed together, and square openings were 
left over each canoe. The mast was stepped in the larger canoe. 
The distance which the platform was elevated above the canoe 
equalled the depth of the canoe. On this a house, triangular when 
viewed from the bow, was erected, with a thatched roof slanting to 
the floor on one side. Although the form of the double canoe is 
believed to be of Fijian origin, this slant-roofed house is credited to 
the Manu’a Archipelago in nomenclature and native theory. The 
vertical side of the house was against the mast. Four posts at the 
corners of this structure were surmounted by another small plat- 
form. The whole effect was of a much taller vessel" than those of 
Eastern Polynesia. The sail was not triangular with the apex at the 
base as in the eastern islands, but was supported by a yard which 


1 Kramer, II, p. 253; Hood, p. 406; Demandt, p. 73. 

2 Brown, G., p. 349. 

3 Turner, p. 163. 

4 A.M.N.H. Model 80.0/3015, 80.0/115a; Kramer, IT, p. 251; Turner, p. 164. 
5 Page 73. 

oA. AM. N. H. Model 80.0/116; Demandt, loc. cit. 

7 Hawaii, Ostmikronesien und Samoa, p. 415. 

8 Thompson, B., p. 294. 

9 Fox, J. R. A. I., Vol. 4, p. 430; Wilkes, I, p. 199; Kramer, II, p. 251. 
10 A. M. N. H. Model 80.0/346. 

11 A. M, N. H., Model 80.0/3015, 80.0/115a; Kramer, p. 251. 


3 


34 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


hung from the mast head'?. It was of coarsely woven matting, 
surrounded by a rim of wood. Distinctions in function were based on 
the use of the canoe for fishing, traveling, and by chiefs*. Also there - 
was a play-boat, called an amatasi*, a light craft with a heavy 
outrigger float, which carried a sail. The distance between the float 
and the canoe was covered by alattice work platform with two crossed 
logs as a base. This type of canoe had a heavy cut-water, and the 
float extended from about one-quarter of the way from the bow 
to the stern. The paddles were leaf-shaped, — the bulge occurring 
about one-third of the way from the top of the blade’. 

The procedure of Samoan canoe building was exceedingly elabo- 
rate, hinging entirely upon the relations between future owner and 
professional builders®. The builders were first formally engaged by 
the present of a valuable mat. After extensive borrowing among his 
relatives and planting crops to support the builders, the owner sum- 
moned the workmen. The workmen brought with-them the -logs 
which had been cut and left to season at the time of the initial 
engagement. A special shed was erected in which the canoe was 
built. Payments were made at stated intervals during construction. 
The launching was followed by a display trip from village to village. 

The canoe builders in Samoa were a definite guild’ §. Recognition 
as a master workman depended upon the satisfactory erection of a 
house or building of a canoe, of sufficient importance to have all the 
ceremonious payments made with due formality. The owner of the 
canoe was forced to treat the builders with great consideration; the 
head of the family was expected to sit with them and prepare sennit 
for their use. The builders brought their wives and children with them, 
and these were fed at the expense of the owner. If the heavy pay- 
ments, which the workmen received at stated intervals were not 
satisfactory to them, they left in anger and no other carpenter 
might take up the work, under the penalty of being robbed of his 
tools and severely beaten by his confréres®. The whole village would 
assist the carpenters in enforcing this discipline. The final payment, 
called umu sa, or sacred oven, was the occasion of a festival when 
the finest mats were presented one by one, with elaborate recitation 
of their pedigrees. This was a very important socio-ceremonial 
occasion, not a religious one. The relatives of the owner polished the 
canoe with coral, after the departure of the workers. Priests had no 


1A.M.N.H., Model, 80.0/3015, 80.0/115a; Kramer, p. 251. 

2 Linton, p. 317. . 

3 Stair, p. 57. 

4 Kramer, IT, pp. 268—-269. For comparison, see Best, The Maori Canoe, 
p. 136. 

> A. M. N. H. Model 80,0/3016a. 

6 Stair, pp. 147—152; Turner, p. 62; Brown, G., p. 250. 

? Stair, p. 147; Turner, p. 62; Brown, G., p. 250. 

8 This was also the case among the house builders. 

® Brown, G., p. 250. 


The Canoe Building Complea 35: 


function in connection with canoes. The place of work was formally 
taboo to intruders! who had no business at the place of work. This 
did not extend to women coming on errands to the workers. No 
other taboos are recorded in connection with canoe building. Con- 
tinence was enjoined upon the builder of a fishing canoe the night 
before the canoe made its maiden voyage. Women were at all times 
forbidden to touch a bonito canoe. A canoe which was named for 
a family god could not be sold?. Canoes occasionally carried the 
symbols of a village god®. The bodies of chiefs were placed in canoes 
which served as coffins*+. No mention is made of human sacrifices or 
other religious rites, except in one myth which records how a legend- 
ary chief of an unknown island launched his canoe over human 
bodies. 

The decked part of the canoe was the seat of honor for men of 
rank®, and a chief’s canoe carried conchshells which were blown when 
he passed a village®. 

The Samoan canoe was very little carved’. What carving there 
was seems to have been a series of geometrical grooves, or triangles®, 
on the sides of the canoe. Occasionally rude figure-heads occurred, 
which were carved in the image of a dog, bird, or human figure, the 
_ traditional coat-of-arms of a particular village®. The distinctive 
decorations were rows of white shells running along a series of pro- 
jections on the bow deck and stern deck and along the outrigger’. 
Kramer™ pictures a stern piece decorated with angular geometric 
incisions arranged in zones. Temporary poles supporting images of 
birds or dogs were sometimes erected in. a canoe?®. 


ANALYSIS OF CANOE BUILDING. 


The typical Polynesian canoes are the single outrigger canoe 
and the double canoe with more or less temporary connecting plat- 
forms. Canoe building is a specialized occupation throughout the 
area and the canoe itself enters into the social stratification and the 
religious patterns in varying degrees. Some form of decoration is 
found on the canoes of all the groups. The smallest form of the 
single outrigger canoe, the simple dug-out, was almost identical 
throughout the area, although the type of decoration, if it was 


1 Stair, p. 149. 

2 Turner, p. 18. 

3 Brown, G., p. 250; Erskine, p. 60. 

4 Pritchard, p. 159. 

5 Turner, p, 163; Hood, p. 101. 

6 Turner, p. 165. 

? Greiner, p. 61. 

8 A, M. N. H. Models, in preceding notes. 
9 Turner, p. 164. 

10 Hood, p. 46; Wilkes, I,.p. 199; Turner, p. 165. 
11 Vol. IT, p. 261. 

12 Turner, p. 191. 


3* 


36 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


decorated, followed the group pattern, — and the Samoan dug-out 
had the characteristic sharp cut-water. Sails made of coarse woven 
mats were used in all the groups; these sails could not be reefed, 
being of the inverted triangle type, except in Samoa. Technolo- 
gically the canoes were all constructed by lashing additional 
wooden parts to a basic dug-out keel, by means of cords (made of 
sennit except in New Zealand). In Samoa this lashing was invisible 
from the outside. The number of side pieces varied from the immense 
single strakes of the Maori canoe to the small irregular patches used 
in some of the smaller islands of the Society group. This divergence 
seems to have been partly a question of the size of the available 
trees, although single strakes and small patches are both found in 
the Societies. The keels of the longer canoes were occasionally made 
of one to three pieces of logs joined together. There are only a few 
significant variations. The Samoan canoe, under Fijian influence, 
had adopted the permanent raft-like platform; the Maori canoe, due 
perhaps to increased size and resulting stability, discarded the 
outrigger, and the canoes of Samoa and Tahiti added the “‘weather- 
platform.” The outrigger attachment varies from the double V form 
of Samoa! and the Marquesas, through the intermediate Society 
Island type, with its double V forward attachment and simpler 
stern attachment. What evidence we have suggests that the Maori 
outrigger was of this form also. The Marquesan and Maori canoes 
had battens to cover the seams. The most important difference in 
technique is between the five piece canoe, the major portion of which 
is hewn from a single log, and the plank canoe, built up of many 
pieces of board. The Society Islands and Samoa used the second 
type at the time of discovery, while the Hawaiians, Maori and Mar- 
quesans used the canoe of the five piece type*. One of the two canoes 
forming the Samoan double canoe was larger than the other and 
the mast was stepped in the larger canoe. Houses were built on 
Samoan and Tahitian canoes, and are reported for the propitiatory 
canoes of the Marquesans and on Maori canoes traditionally; 
canopies formed by awning stretched over supporting posts are 
recorded for the Hawaiian and Tahitian canoes. The bulrush raft- 
canoe seems to have been outside this general complex. It is reported 
definitely from New Zealand and Hawaii and possibly occurred in 
Tahiti. It is noteworthy that a small vessel of this type was used by 
the Maori as a propitiatory drift offering, and that the analogous 
Marquesan drift offering was a canoe carrying a round house, al- 
though the typical Marquesan canoe did not carry a house. 

The distinction between canoes used for different purposes seems 
to have been a purely usual one between canoes used for travelling, 
fishing and war. Chief’s canoes were larger in all the groups, especial- 


1 The simple inserted form also occurred in Samoa. 
2 The use of more than five pieces is mentioned for all three of these groups, 
however, so this difference would seem to be a later development. 


The Canoe Building Complex 37 


ly decorated in Samoa and Tahiti, with exclusive right to certain 
sennit decorations in Hawaii. Canoes differently constructed and 
reserved for sport are reported for Hawaiia and Samoa only!. 
Canoes dedicated to a god and sacred to the use of the priests of that 
god occur in Tahiti and are recorded also among the Moriori.? 

The differences in the importance and prestige of the craftsmen 
in the different groups was enormous. In Hawaii the planning and 
all of the most skilled work was done by the ceremonial priests ;, skill 
was a question of special religious vocation, and the priest whose 
auguries were unfavorable was forbidden to engage in canoe building, 
without respect for his proficiency.Canoe builders were a starveling 
class, poorly paid, and little esteemed. In the Marquesas the skilled 
workers were separated entirely from the priests, whose functions 
were of a strictly.religious character. The workers were housed and 
fed during the construction of the canoe, and handsomely recom- 
pensed. The marks of their participation in a sacred occupation 
still clung to them, however, for they were tabooed throughout the 
course of the work, living removed from all connection with women, 
in a separate house built for this special purpose. Skilled artisans 
were classed with the priests as belonging to a loose, slightly organ- 
ized class in society, tuhuna. Among the Maori the picture is blurred 
by the coincidence of rank and religious power inthesame individual. 
Furthermore, the high development of carving and painting called 
for greater specialization and set more of a premium upon talent as 
distinguished from training. Cases are recorded of raids conducted 
primarily to obtain slaves skilled in the execution of the particular 
type of decoration for which a special tribe had become famous. The 
elaborately carved bow and stern pieces were sometimes the work of 
years and seem to have been left in the hands of special artists. 
The designing of a large canoe was also a matter for the expert who 
was sometimes summoned from a great distance; but the actual 
construction of the canoe was not left in the hands of the experts. 
Besides the definite ritual acts which were performed by ceremonial 
priests, there were many parts of the work which must be done by 
men of rank who possessed mana. So we get here this curious reverse 
of the Hawaiian picture, where all work was sedulously avoided by 
individuals with any pretention to rank. The parts of the construc- 
tion of a Maori canoe demanding communal labor were performed 
by slaves. Skill here seems to have been an individual matter — not 
institutionalized to any great extent. In Tahiti canoes built for 
districts or chiefs were built by a sort of feudal levy in which the 
materials were provided and the heavy work, such as felling the 
trees was done by different tenant groups. We know less about the 
Tahitian canoe builders, but we know they were a definite class, 


1 The Hawaiian play-canoe was long and slender. built primarily for display. 
In Samoa the amatasi was an intrusive Fijian form. 
2 Skinner, H. D., The Material Culture of the Morioris, I, p. 116. 


38 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


members of which attached themselves to the service of important 
chiefs, while others were hired by regular payments of hogs and 
cloth. These payments were made at different periods in the con- 
structions of the canoes, at which times offerings were made to the 
gods of the profession and of the chief. The sequence of payments 
is reminiscent of the Samoan pattern, but the occurrence of a de- 
finitely religious rite at each stage is more like Hawaii. The Samoan 
canoe builders were far more powerful and important than those of 
any of the other groups. Building a canoe was largely a question 
of accumulating enough property to engage sufficient workers, 
who brought with them a train of apprentices and dependents, and 
took the actual construction entirely into their own hands. The 
ceremonial elaboration here is concerned not with mollifying offen- 
ded deities or entreating the favor of divine patrons of the profession, 
or the chiefs, but with conciliating the arrogant and powerful guild 
of canoe builders. Set speeches and kava ceremonies which amoun- 
ted almost to a social ritual were prescribed for each step in the 
negotiations. An important member of the household, either the 
chief himself or a delegated representative, was expected to sit with 
the builders, administer to their needs, and ensure their affability. 
If the builders were dissatisfied at any stage, either with the treat- 
ment or the payments they received, they would discontinue the 
work; so conscious was their sense of professional solidarity, that 
no other workers would dare to take up the construction. The high 
rate at which their services were reckoned was uncomplicated by 
any parallel function, of priest or chief, and they enjoyed undisputed — 
and tremendous prestige. 

The importance of the priest varies almost inversely to the impor- 
tance of the craftsmen, but this correlation is not perfect. In Hawaii 
the priest had charge of the divination in which, by means of a special 
ritually-sought dream, the gods advised him as to the soundness of 
the selected tree. He performed the series of ritual acts and the 
accompanying incantations, at the felling, shaping, hauling and 
launching of the canoe, and also did all the planning and the 
particularly skilled work connected with the construction. Men 
entered an apprenticeship, not to the master craftsman as in Samoa, 
‘but to the canoe-building priest, of much mana, and their vocation 
was tested on religious, not practical grounds. In the Marquesasthe 
priestly function consisted of the recitation of the Pu’e, the chant 
which united the new-made canoe with all things that had been 
made before. The priest accompanied the workmen, chanting at the 
felling of the tree, while it was hauled down the mountain-side and 
at the launching ceremony. The emphasis seems rather.to have 
been upon the priest as the exponent of the religious aspect of all 
work than upon his intimate connection with canoe building as 
such. Among the Maori many of the most sacred functions were the 
prerogatives of those of high birth, instead of belonging to those who 


The Canoe Building Complex 39 


had made a vocation of priest-craft. Thus, just as the skilled crafts- 
man had to yield to the supernatural fitness of the high-born man 
of mana, so the most sacred parts of the construction itself were done 
by chiefs, not by priests. But a multiplicity of activities still re- 
mained to the priest. He took the auguries for an auspicious day to 
begin the work — not by a dream as in Hawaii, but by calculations 
based on the position of the moon — he removed the taboo from the 
chosen tree, and recited the incantations appropriate to each stage 
of the work. The phraseology of these incantations suggests the 
Hawaiian, but the position of the priest is not as much emphasised, 
because so much of the work was performed by men of rank. The 
priesthood in Tahiti was a more institutionalized matter. The priest 
was called in to make offerings at each stage of the work, and 
officiated at the community altar when canoes specially dedicated 
for war or for the service of the gods were consecrated. At the dedi- 
cation of the sacred canoes a religious function was taken over by 
the most sacred chief, or ‘“‘king’’, who was offered the eye of the 
human victim sacrificed on these occasions. The whole emphasis 
is on a priest who serves a definite altar, and makes offerings there 
to sanctify a special canoe. Furthermore, the priests had their own 
canoes, in which they erected shrines, and these specially decorated 
craft were an important element in the Tahitian fleet. In Samoa no 
religious rites have been recorded. The place of work was taboo, that 
is, reserved from unseemly interruption. But the uninstitutionalized 
shamanistic priest had no function. 

The religious rites show certain similarities. The procedure as 
such, the division into stages marked by religious observances, 
seems to be in part mechanically determined by the type of con- 
struction. In those groups where the tree was felled and partly shaped 
in the mountains, the rites centered about a five-fold pattern of 
felling, steps in shaping, hauling to the shore, finishing steps, and 
launching. In Tahiti and Samoa, where the canoes were constructed 
of smaller units of wood the stages chosen for special observance, — 
in Samoa only by ceremonial payment of the workers, in Tahiti by 
offerings to the gods and payment of the workers, — were the 
various steps in the actual construction of the canoe. In these 
latter groups, the selection of the tree and the process of conveying 
the tree down to the shore have lost their significance, both actually 
and in ceremonial practice. 

If the accompanying rites are studied in detail, great variation 
is found. In Hawaii the divination of the suitability of the tree is 
made by the priest sleeping in front of his shrine, where he is super- 
naturally advised in a carefully defined dream. Among the Maori, 
divination is based on the movements of the moon, and the roots of a 
plant. In Hawaii, New Zealand and the Marquesas the group of 
workers repair to the mountains and offerings are made. But in the 
Marquesas the erection of the taboo house for the workers assumes 


40 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


a ceremonial significance, which is absent elsewhere, while in Hawaii 
the hewing of the canoe and the necessary charms are done together 
by the officiating priest. Among the Maori the emphasis is on 
removing the sacredness from the selected tree, the hewn log, and 
the finished canoe. The binding of the outrigger to the canoe is the 
specially taboo operation in Hawaii; and the place behind the canoe 
was sacred to the priest who followed it down the mountain, chant- 
ing as he went. Among the Maori the whole group engaged in the 
operation sing canoe-hauling songs to liven their work, although a 
canoe hauling incantation was also recited. 

Human sacrifice occurs in all of the groups except Samoa, but 
with varying coincidence. In Hawaii a sacrifice was made at the 
launching of the war canoe of some great chief. The basis on which 
the victim was selected is not recorded!. In the Marquesas the 
completed war canoe was dispatched on a raid to secure sacrificial 
victims to give the canoe mana, or occasionally raiding parties 
were sent out to obtain sacrifices for the launching of a large canoe. 
Here the victims seem to have been chosen from enemy tribes. 
Among the Maori, at the building of a great chief’s canoe, a human 
victim was buried beneath the tree. This sacrifice required a victim 
of rank; sometimes one of the chief’s own children was selected. 
At the launching of the canoe, on the other hand, slaves were 
sacrificed and eaten; the object seems to have been an enhancement 
of the festivity of the occasion more than of the mana of the canoe. 
In Tahiti human sacrifices were made only when a sacred canoe was 
dedicated to Eotea; at other times offerings of hogs were substituted. 
The eye of the victim, in conformance to the Tahitian mock- 
cannibalistic pattern, was offered to the “king.” 

The taboos connected with canoe building show as wide a vari- 
ation — the taboo pattern in each group being quite distinct and 
unmistakable. Unfortunately we have no record of taboos from 
Tahiti except the prohibition against the profane use of canoes 
dedicated to Eotea. A similar prohibition existed in Samoa, where 
canoes named after the gods could never be sold?. In Hawaii the 
taboos surrounding canoe building were most rigorous. They were 
characterized by periods of great sacredness followed by intervals 
of relative laxity. The most serious transgression of the taboo 
was in the form of noise or disturbance, punishable in the case of 
the lashing of a “royal’’ canoe with death. The place behind the 
canoe, as it was hauled down the mountain, was taboo, and only 
the priest might walk there. The mythology tells of long taboos 


1 Malo, pp. 211—212, mentions that the human sacrifice for the Luakine 
ceremony in the ritual of Ku must be a malefactor. The choice of a sacrifice 
of this type for one of the most important ceremonies may be significant 
in this connection. 

2 This taboo has particular point in Samoa, because canoes were regular 
objects of barter. 


The Canoe Building Complex 4] 


imposed during the building of specially sacred vessels — these 
follow the typically Hawaiian pattern, in which all persons are 
forbidden to walk abroad, to enter a canoe, to light a fire, or engage 
in any work. In the Marquesas, where all work was taboo, the chief 
prohibition was against all contact with women. All of those 
engaged in the operation were purified by bathing or charms before 
they began their labor; they lived in a sacred house; their food was 
taboo and they were denied all intercourse with women. Women 
were not allowed to enter a canoe or even to bathe in a lake in which 
a canoe floated. If a fishing canoe were profaned by the touch of a 
woman, human hair must be burnt on the bow to purify it. Among 
the Maori there is a still different pattern. Here the grove of trees, 
sacred to the uses of canoe building, is taboo; and this taboo must 
be removed from the selected tree and transferred to another tree!. 
In addition to this, parts of the work were taboo except to those 
possessing the supernatural powers inherent in priesthood or in 
rank. Food was taboo upon fishing vessels and on the quarter- 
deck of war-vessels. (In Tahiti the food of men and of women had to 
be carried in separate canoes on a journey.) In Samoa the operation 
was taboo against intrusion of any sort, and men of all ranks had to 
pass by another way. Thus while various taboos may be said to 
attach themselves to canoes and canoe building all over the area, 
their prohibitions are so varied and so thoroughly integrated with 
the taboo patterns of the various groups that very little similarity 
is discernable. 

The connection between canoes and rank is partly inevitable and 
partly incidental. All over the area the chiefs had the largest and 
most highly decorated canoes, the most desirable seat on the front 
deck or the platform, beneath the awning or in the house was 
reserved for the chiefs and their families. This would seem to be the 
logical consequence of the wealth and prestige of chiefs in Poly- 
nesia. In Hawaii a common man was forbidden to put off from shore 
in a display canoe if a chief were out on the water; canoe racing 
was considered to be the prerogative of the chiefs; a special lashing 
was reserved for the “royal” canoes, and intrusion on their con- 
struction was punished with death. In the Marquesas the chiefs 
usually owned the canoe, and these war canoes were kept in a 
canoe-house in the chief’s establishment. But this seems to have 
been more a trusteeship for the group, rather than strictly a chiefly 
prerogative. | 

The permanent decoration of canoes had developed into a definite 
style in each group. The Hawaiian canoes were very little carved 
and their characteristic decorations were elaborate sennit lashings 
in different colors. The keel of the canoe was painted black, and 
the upper strake left the natural yellow color of the wood. In the 


1 See page 25. 


42 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Marquesas an elaborate and highly individualized style of carving 
was found. The stern and bow pieces of large canoes were always 
ornamented and sometimes the side pieces. The figure-head con- 
sisted of a single flat tiki face, and the neck of the bow piece was 
sometimes ornamented with small figures carved in high relief, or 
attached. These are the essentials of the Maori figure-head, although 
worked out so much more elaborately in New Zealand. The sides and 
stern of the canoes were carved with angular geometric and also 
with curvilinear designs arranged in zones between parallel lines 
running transversely to the axis of the canoe. Ornamental colored 
sennit lashings were also used. Among the Maori the typical styli- 
zation of the human figure was supplemented by a wealth of 
incidental ornamental detail built around the double scroll. The 
bow-piece was a highly conventionalized arrangement, and the 
stern piece consisted of the characteristic scroll filigree work. The 
sides of the canoes were also painted in curvilinear patterns, re- 
sembling those used in thigh tattooing. The smaller canoes, which 
were not carved, were often painted. The Tahitian canoes were 
carved on stern and sometimes bow, into small naturalistic figures, 
sometimes arranged one above the other (the whole series only 
partially unified). Sometimes only one small bird figure surmounted 
the long, disproportionately slender stern, which rose nearly per- 
pendicularly from the canoe. The Samoan canoes were sparsely 
carved on the forward and rear decks, and on the upper side planks. 
The carving consisted of simple series of deep incisions, triangular 
in cross sections, incised parallel lines, or rows of interlocking 
triangles. The most characteristic Samoan canoe decorations were 
rows of white shells, attached to the tops of the decks. 

The temporary decorations varied less. Streamers of tapa were 
used in Hawaii, the Marquesas and Tahiti; cocoa-nut fronds were 
used in the Marquesas, and fern fronds in New Zealand. Ropes, 
strung with tufts of feathers, and tufts of feathers inserted under 
the battens which covered the seams, were used in New Zealand 
and the Marquesas. Red feathers were used on the sacred canoes in 
Tahiti. Human hair and skulls were peculiar to the Marquesas, — 
the antennae-like wands used at the bow, to the Maori canoes!. The 
antennae on Maori canoes are apparently derived from the fishing 
rods fitted in the same position in Tahitian canoes. 


1 A drawing of a canoe from the Island of Mentawei pictured by Rosenberg. 
Inter. Arch. fiir Eth. I, 1888, shows similar antennae, and in its whole form 
and decoration is more like the Maori canoe than the canoes of any of the 
neighboring groups. 


THE HOUSE BUILDING COMPLEX: 


DESCRIPTION 


House Building in Hawaii. — The typical Hawaiian house was a 
grass house — a light wooden framework completely thatched with 
grass®. The form varied from the house with eaves resting on the 
ground through the roof whose eaves rested on side-posts, to a hipped 
roof*. Stone houses were sometimes used®, and on Lanai these house 
platforms had two divisions, sometimes distinguished only by 
different qualities of stone work, but sometimes the finely paved 
portion is six or eight inches higher than the other*. The floor was 
paved with small pebbles and covered with several layers of mats’; 
in the poorer houses the mats were placed over beaten earth, 
covered with dry grass*®. The fireplace, which was usually situated? 
in the center of the house, was a slight excavation walled in with 
flat stones. On Lanai’, these stones formed a box-like square two 
feet on a side, often resting on a stone slab. The ridge pole™ of the 
Hawaiian house rested on two end-posts which were notched to 
receive it. This ridge pole was often shorter than the distance 
between the bases of the two posts, and the posts accordingly 
slanted inwards. The front and back posts, of which the corner ones 
were often the stoutest, were grooved to receive the wall plate. 
Rafters which equalled in number the front and back posts, had 
their lower ends cut into a heel and fork. The upper ends of the 
rafters intersected over the ridge pole, and the supplementary ridge 
pole was placed in the crotch; all four parts were lashed firmly to- 


1 As temples were absent in two of the groups, Samoa and New Zealand, the 
type of construction and consecration ceremonies connected with temples 
will not be discussed in this paper. For discussion of this feature of Poly- 
nesian culture, see Handy, J. P. S., Vol. 35, p. 47. 

2 The earlier dataon Hawaiian houses were taken in most cases from the island 
of Oahu itself. Mr. Emory’s recent investigations on Lanai provide new 
evidence which it is difficult to interpret, as thereis not enough information 
on the amount of variation found throughout the Hawaiian group. There- 
fore all information referring to Lanai will be so indicated. 

3 Brigham, pp. 267—8. Malo, pp. 159—160. 

4 Brigham, p. 272. 

5 Brigham, p. 274. 

6 Emory, p. 44. 

7 Brigham, p, 308. 

8 Brigham, p,. 284. 

9 Brigham, p. 298. 

10 Hmory, p. 45. 
11 Brigham, pp. 275—279. 


44 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


gether. The framework was completed by a lattice of small poles, 
which were tied from pole to pole at intervals of from five to seven 
inches. In large houses these were supplemented by vertical poles 
and cross beams on the roof. The entire house was covered with this 
lattice work, except the space left for the door. The thatching 
consisted of a lining of banana leaves, stalks of dried sugar cane or 
pandanus leaves. The outer thatch consisted of bunches of long 
grass, placed against the lattice with the roots up, and tied to the 
rafters with one twist of cord. The thatcher started at the ground 
and worked up. Several methods were employed in bonneting the 
ridge-pole, the commonest being either a trimming of grass and 
ferns, or by braiding the “‘half of grass on each side with a stiffening 
of fresh grass, making the bonnet look like a protuberant roll.” 
The thatching of roof and gable walls at the point of intersection 
presented a most difficult problem, as the Hawaiian house had no 
projecting eaves. These seams were heavily braided or bonneted 
with fern fronds, or thicker grass. Around the door space the grass 
was carefully braided. The form of the door itself is in some doubt?, 
but Malo® says the top and bottom pieces were rabetted along the 
edge and that these slid in grooves above and below. The door 
seems to have been constructed of several transverse pieces, prob- 
ably grooved together, and secured with cord*. The Hawaiians 
used a bar to fasten the door from within. Some houses contained a 
veranda, formed either by extensions of the rafters at a slightly 
reduced slope, or constructed separately in front of the house. When 
constructed separately this veranda had a flat roof; the roof and 
side walls were covered with cocoa-nut leaves or tapa>. Houses were 
occasionally raised on posts in regions where floods occurred, and 
in the absence of flood waters the family resided in the space under 
the posts®. Garrets with a lattice-work floor were sometimes 
constructed and usedas store houses’. The houses were surrounded 
by fences, usually placed very close to the house. These fences were 
built of palings, or occasionally of stone’. On Lanai® none of the 
enclosing walls were high enough to keep out pigs. 

In size the average house is described by Stewart?® as being about 
eight to ten feet long, six to eight feet broad, and four to six feet 
high. Houses of chiefs were sometimes 40 to 60 feet long, 20 to 
1 Brigham, pp. 280—283. 

2 Brigham, p. 283. 

3 Malo, page 160; Emerson translates this slide while Brigham claims the 
translation should be swing. But as his argument is based on false ethnol- 
ogical theory rather than linguistic evidence, it may be disregarded. 

4 Brigham, pp. 280—283. 

5 Brigham, p. 289, 

6 Brigham, p. 272. 

7 Malo, p. 165 (Emerson). 

8 Malo, p. 160; Brigham, p. 101; Corney, p. 90. 

9 Emory, p. 45. 

10 Stewart: Hawaiian Islands, p. 182. 


The House Building Complex 45 


25 feet broad, and 18 to 20 feet high!, while in some parts of the 
islands Stewart reports huts no higher than his waist?. Emory’s® 
estimates of house sites on Lanai average 12 feet wide by 20 feet 
long*. 

The houses of the Hawaiians were highly specialized within the 
household, varying from a respectable minimum of five to a larger 
number. There were separate eating houses and separate working 
houses for men and women; the woman had a special house for 
withdrawal during menstruation; and there was usually a heiau, 
or house of worship®. Canoe houses seem to have been private in the 
case of fishermen®, but also to have occurred as communal structures. 
Brigham’s list’? of housewords® gives a special term for council- 
chamber and for store-house. Malo® also mentions large meeting 
houses, but we have no other records of the storehouse. 

The site of the house was usually selected by a divining priest”. 
The future owner and his friends went to the mountains and felled 
the necessary timber!. The front corner posts were the first to be 
erected. The Hawaiians did not know the method used by the Maori 
of squaring the house plan by measuring the diagonals!”; the only 
device of this kind which they used consisted of stretching a cord 
across the front posts from end post to end post, to ensure their 
being of the same height, and halving a cord stretched from front 
corner posts to rear corner posts, to find the midpoint for placing 
the post to support the ridge pole. After the initial framework was 
lashed together, stout cords were bound about -this frame, and 
these were released after the lathes had been tied on, tightening 
the whole frame by the resulting expansion’*?. The Hawaiians used 
a net to cover the newly thatched house, so that the grass would 
dry evenly". If the divining priest had not approved the house site 
before the house was started, he would do so at its completion”, after 
which the consecrating ceremony was performed?*, and the house 
was then habitable. There were no organized guilds of carpenters 


1 Stewart: Hawazrian Islands, p. 137. 

2 Thid., p. 152, 

3 Emory, p. 45. 

4 He could not discover how much of this platform was actually occupied by 

the house, 

5 Brigham, p, 263; Malo, pp. 50—51 and p. 164. 

6 Brigham, p, 263. 

? Brigham, p. 302; Emory, p. 51. 

8 Page 302, 

® Page 185. 

10 Fornander, Series ITI, p. 58. 

11 Malo, pp, 158—159, 

12 Brigham, p. 275; Best, The Maori Race, Vol. II, p. 562, 
13 Tbid., p. 279, 
14 Brigham, p. 283; 
15 Fornander, ITI, p. 58, 
16 Brigham, p. 287. 


46 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


in Hawaii'. The large houses of the chiefs were built by a system of 
corvé, the skilled work being done by some of the retainers?. The 
common houses were built by the future owners and their friends?, 
and each village contained one or two men more skilled than the 
rest+, These more skilful individuals were called in to plan the 
framework, and to finish the edges of the roof, the ridge pole, and 
the corners. There is no record of the time or kind of payment. 
Final approval of the work rested with the priesthood®, and united 
skill in-house building and divining powers do not seem to have 
ever been combined in one person. 

The function of the priest consisted of divination of a suitable 
site’, or condemnation of a house unsuitably situated or unsatis- 
factorily constructed (and the cleansing of a house so condemned, 
by fire and elaborate offerings of plants, fowl, and fish)’. Further- 
more the priest was sometimes required to sleep in a new house’®, to 
exorcise evil spirits. But his most important function was in the 
performance of the consecration ceremony, (“cutting the navel 
cord of the house’’!*). A special tuft of thatch was left over the door 
and the priest stood in the doorway, — the owner and his friends 
standing without, — holding a stone adze in one hand and a tapa- 
beater in the other, recited the pule and severed the grass tuft with 
the adze. It is not clear whether the priest who recited this prayer 
and the divining priest were the same person or not#!. 

The only other rites connected with house building were the 
occasional human sacrifices which were buried beneath one of the 
house posts!*. Hogs weresacrificed to the gods of the priesthood at 
the ceremony of purifying a condemned house. 

The chief taboos connected with houses were the mutual taboos 
preventing men and women from entering each other’s eating 
houses!*. The woman’s house of retirement was also tabooed to men; 


1 Brigham, p. 268. 

* Laurence, p. 71. 

3 Ellis, Journal, p. 239. 

4 Laurence, p. 73; Brigham, p. 279. Brigham, p. 265, the great similarity in 
the interspaces ‘and timber sizes all over the group, which he believed 
indicated a strictly prescribed procedure. 

5 Laurence, p. 73, says: ‘“They were paid in advance with presents.” 

6 Fornander, III, p. 58. 

7 Fornander, III, pp. 58—64. 

® Thi. 3.3283. 

® Jarves, p. 42; Brigham, p. 287. 

10 Malo, p. 160; Brigham, p. 287. 

11 Malo, p. 160, refers tothe ceremonial priest specifically as the kahuna pule. 

re Brigham, p. 275 ; Malo, pp. 211—212, mentions that in thesacrifices forone 
of the special forms of worship followed by the king a “lawbreaker was 
always chosen as the sacrifice’’. 

13 Brigham, p. 282. 

14 Eveleth, p. 87; Malo, p. 64; Stewart, C. S., op. cit. contradictsthe mutuality 

of the taboo, but his evidence is not convincing. 


The House Building Complex 47 


the houses of chiefs were tabooed to women and commoners?. 
Stewart? also mentions the custom of putting a taboo on a chief’s 
new house by which entrance was prevented except on the payment 
of gifts. The protective taboo was signified by heavy poles crossed 
over the door®, or by a stick with white tapa at the end of it. 

Rank seems to have been indicated more by the size and quality 
of the houses than by any differences in form or decoration*. Houses 
of chiefs were built by a general levy, and taxes were remitted to 
tenants who provided specially fine timber or grass®. Houses of 
sacred chiefs were taboo, and even the adjoining ground was 
sacred®. Jarves’ speaks of carved houses, but this does not seem to 
have been a usual practice. The usual ornamentation consisted of 
excellence of woodworking® and ornamental sennit lashing. The 
lashings on the houses in the Bishop Museum show very simple 
patterns?. 

House Building in the Marquesas”: — The impression made on 
early travelers by the Marquesan houses was not a favorable one; 
they are described as being much inferior to the houses of the 
Society Islanders“. Linton distinguishes between two types: the 
dwelling-house type, and the small temporary shelter type”. The 
most characteristic feature of the dwelling house of the Marquesas 
was the sharp pitch of the rear roof which sloped straight to the 
ground, as contrasted with the short front roof, raised on posts. 
These houses were always built on stone platforms; the small 
houses, on the other hand, had no platforms, and were constructed by 
placing a ridge pole which was triangular in cross sections, on two 
supporting posts, and leaning rafters on each side from the ridge 
pole to the ground. This type of house was used for temporary 
purposes?’, 

The platform of the Marquesan house was an essential part of 
the construction. If the houses were built on a slope, the back edge 
of the platform was not raised above the level of the ground#. It 
was sometimes ten feet high, usually less than six. This platform 
was rectangular in shape and divided lengthwise into two unequal 


1 Stewart, p. 241 (Hawaiian Islands); Malo, pp. 80—81. 

2 Ibid., p. 103. 

3 Brigham, Figure 86, p. 284. 

4 Ellis, pp. 238—239; Stewart, Hawaiian Islands, p. 137. 

5 Brigham, p. 271. 

6 Malo, pp. 80—8l. 

7 Jarves, History of the Hawauan Islands, p. 41. 

8 Brigham, p. 274. 

® Greiner, p. 35, says one pattern used in the sennit lashings is like the oval 
design found in the Marquesas, the other resembles twilling. 

10 See page 18. 

11 Forster, G., II, p. 21; Cook, I, p. 461. 

12 Page 271. 

13 Handy, p. 153. 

14 This same arrangement occurs on the island of Lanai. Emory, p. 44. 


48 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


parts, the front section being about twenty inches lower than the 
rear!. A strip of the rear of the house floor was left unpaved, and 
filled in with soft earth to form the bed space*. The front of the 
platform was faced with large rectangular stone slabs. Circular pits 
were sometimes left in this platform which extended down to the 
ground. Sloping stone slabs, serving as back rests, were occasionally 
built into the veranda portion of the platform*®. The essential 
elements of the framework‘, were the end posts upon which rested a 
ridge pole, the front posts and the stringer’. The endposts were 
usually triangular in cross section and planted six or eight inches 
within the end of the house wall. They averaged about 13 feet in 
height. The ridge pole was hewn from a single log, and projected a 
little at each end of the house. It rested in notches cut in the tops 
of the end posts, but was not attached in any way. The front posts 
which were usually three to five feet high were either notched at the 
top, furnished with a neck which fitted into the front stringer, 
or left flat®. These front posts were usually six in number, but 
sometimes four or eight. The center pair were placed close together 
and served as door jambs. Posts were either inserted in holes left 
in the platform’, or kept in place by a deeply notched base stringer. 
The stringer which rested on the top of the front post was either a 
round pole, or L shaped, resting in notches and lashed to the posts 
with sennit attachments, which were invisible on the outside and 
ornamentally elaborated on the inside. The front roof was peculiar 
in that there were no heavy rafters at the ends. It was constructed 
of three heavy rafters, one in the middle and the other two half way 
from each end. Their upper ends rested against the ridge pole, and 
their lower ends on the stringer. These main rafters were supplement- 
ed by additional light rafters of bamboo or peeled fau poles, which 
extended below the stringer, forming eaves, and projected above 
the ridge pole, forming a crotch where they met the small rafters of 
the rear roof. The rear roof was supported by eight main rafters, 
extending from the ridge pole to the ground. The supplementary 
ridge pole’ rested in the intersection of the small rafters of rear and 
front roof. These light rafters were held in place by three horizontal 
poles, which were lashed securely by sennit or bark string. Both the 
front and rear roofs extended from six inches to a foot beyond the > 
walls of the house. The walls of the Marquesan house were sometimes 
Jacking entirely, and were usually removable. The end walls were 
formed of light poles, arranged like an inverted fan, and regularly 


1 Linton, pp. 272—273. 

2 Ibid., p. 282. 

3 Ibid., pp. 272, 273. 

4 Tbid., p. 275, quotes Garcia, who states that formerly center posts were 
used to support the ridge pole when the two end posts were not sufficient. 

5 Tbid., pp. 275—279. 

6 Linton believes this was the ancient type. 

7 Linton, p. 280. 


~The House Building Complea 49 


thatched, or else of pieces of light bamboo, lashed to these uprights. 
Although the front walls were occasionally thatched, more often 
they consisted of separate panels, of light poles, corded together and 
placed between the front posts. These panels were strengthened by 
cross pieces at the back, which fitted into notches cut in the sides 
of the front posts. The doorway', which was only two to three feet 
high was placed in the middle of the front of the house, two front 
posts serving as door jambs, and the stringer sometimes served as a 
lintel, — occasionally a separate lintel was added. This doorway 
was closed either by tying together two cocoa-nut leaf mats, one 
of which was tied to each side post, or by two wooden slabs which 
slid between additional posts placed just behind the door posts, 
forming a double-leaf sliding door. 

There were no fireplaces in the Marquesan dwelling house?. The 
roof and occasionally the end walls also were thatched with mats 
eight to twelve feet long, and twelve to eighteen inches wide. ‘These 
mats were made by “splitting a cocoa-nut frond down the mid-rib, 
and interweaving the leaflets of either half to form a long narrow 
mat of checkerboard pattern.’ These mats were placed on the roof 
with the mid-rib edge up, and tied to every third or fourth rafter; 
sennit or bark string was used. The thatch was laid on in tiers, the 
bottom one being laid on first, and over-lapping heavily, only two 
or three inches being exposed. Thatching material was also made by 
stringing the leaves of the bread-fruit tree on long reeds, and from 
palmetto leaves, so strung on light rods as to give the appearance 
of shingles. The ridge pole was bonneted?, either by tying several 
layers of cocoa-nut mats over the supplementary ridge pole, and 
securing these by wooden splints, inserted between the two ridge 
poles, or occasionally by a layer of pandanus leaves placed over the 
main ridge pole and secured by additional poles placed in the angles 
made by the intersections of the small rafters. Handy’s drawing* 
shows the projection of the front roof beyond the front walls to 
form a covered veranda running the length of the house. 

The bed? was an integral part of the house. The rear part of the 
house floor was covered with soft earth, with its entire surface six 
to eight inches below the level of the front floor. This space was 
bordered by dressed palm logs, filled in with fern fronds, and cov- 
ered with several thicknesses of mats. A bed of intersecting poles, 
supported on posts eighteen inches to two feet high, is reported 
for the fishermen’s houses at Pua Ma’u, Hiva Oa®. 


1 Linton, p. 282. 

2 Linton, Personal correspondence. 

3 Linton, p. 282. 

é Handy, Native Culture in the Marquesas, p. 153. 

* Linton, p. 283. On page 282 he quotes Krustenstern and Garcia as mention- 
ing temporary partitions. Brigham, p. 308, reports a mat structure, 
sometimes extending the length of the room, and cecnsones raised on‘a 
platform, which he believed was a modern feature. 


4 


50 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


The household in the Marquesas always consisted of at least 
two houses, the dwelling house described above, and the cook 
house!, which was a shed placed on the ground, thatched with cocoa- 
nut leaf mats, and sometimes closed on two or three sides. The oven 
was a hole in the floor of this shed. In addition there were sometimes 
a taboo house for men?, which consisted of a frame raised on posts 
five to twelve feet high and fifteen to twenty feet square. On this 
frame work a house was erected. This structure was situated near 
the dwelling house. There was also a family sacred place, either a 
small enclosure, or a small high platform on which the temporary 
houses used at birth* and death* ceremonies were erected. The 
chief’s establishment contained a house for warriors and a canoe 
house®. These canoe houses seem to have been formed by connecting 
two heavy posts of equal height with a convex beam, from the center 
of which rafters ran to the peak of the roof, supporting the ridge 
pole®. Houses erected for tattooing of women and commoners, and 
for camping were of the temporary small house variety’. Houses 
raised on poles were built for the instruction of young people, as 
taboo dwellings for men, and store-houses for the food of taboo 
individuals, and as gathering places for the men to assemble to sing 
sacred chants®. The large sacred structures were of the dwelling 
type, but with a much higher roof, — their posts being made of 
several pieces of lumber spliced together’. These had three front. - 
posts and the front was open. The construction’ of a house and 
_ platform was looked upon as one operation, although new houses 
were often built on old platforms. Although the house itself was 
not taboo, the workers were. They had to purify themselves before 
and after the building operations. The master builder laid the 
corner-stone of the platform and supervised the construction. A 
ceremonial “feast of entrance’ freed the house for occupancy. 

The master builder only supervised the work, leaving most of the 
labor to the relatives of the owner®. The owner fed the workers 
during the operation. A feast. was given at the beginning of the 
work, and all who came were expected to bring stones®. Special 
craftsmen were employed to put on the ornamental sennit lashings, 
and to carve the front and end posts. The supervising tuhuna was a 
master craftsman and not a priest. 

It was the duty of the ceremonial priest to recite the Pu’e chant 
after the corner-stones had been laid, which ended the work for the 


1 Handy, p. 64, 

2 Thid., p. 63. 

3 [bid., p, 66, 

* Langsdorf, p. 128. 

5 Linton, p, 271. 

6 Tbid., p. 295, 

7 See page 47. 

8 Linton, p. 295. 

® Handy, pp. 150—151. 


The House Building Complex 51 


first day. He recited the chant again at the completion of the house. 
No details are available concerning the “feast of entrance’’, except? 
a ceremonial by which the mana of the “oracle house’ was tested 
by a body of warriors hurling their spears at the decorated ridge 
of the new house. This suggests the Maori custom? of strangers 
hurling their spears at a partly completed canoe as a means of 
divining its future luck. 

Sacrifices were offered at the consecration of a chief’s house’. 
The temporary houses used for birth were burned?. A special house 
was erected on the second day after the death of a chief, and this 
house was elaborately decorated. The houses elevated on poles were 
used as the sleeping houses of taboo men, especially of old men who 
no longer had any connection with women. These were also used as 
storehouses for food of taboo men, and as places where men ate 
taboo food*. Stewart’ says women’s houses were not taboo to men. 
Men and women ate together® as a rule. The men engaged in house 
building had to be purified by bathing®. Special houses were erec- 
ted for taboo occasions like birth and death!°. The mats on the 
front of the bed weretabooto men". Only cocoa-nut mats were used 
on the beds of priests and fishermen, and special raised beds were 
constructed for priests on which they slept after they had eaten of 
the sacrifice". 

The establishment of the chief!* was the community center, and 
contained an elaborate dwelling (the posts of which were often 
carved into human figures!*),a cook house, store houses, dwellings 
of attendants, all on stone platforms, warriors’ house on a stone 
platform, and a paved dance space. Here canoe houses were some- 
times erected. There was also a carved stone basin in which the 
chief’s eldest son bathed. Special houses were erected for the 
tattooing of the chief’s son". 

The decoration of Marquesan houses was of three types: orna- 
mental stone work, which might be simple ornamental masonry, 
figures, carved in high relief on the facing of the platforms, or small 


1 Handy, pp. 150—151. 

* Best, The Maori Canoe, p. 48. 

3 Handy, p. 241 quotes Pére Siméon, who says human sacrifices were used to 
remove taboo from a house. 

4 Handy, p. 72. 

5 Thid., p. 63. 

6 Langsdorf, p. 128. 

7 Stewart, C. S., A Visit to the South pr2e,D 2els 

8 Handy, p. 135. 

® Tbid., p. 150. 

+8 Tbid., pp. 72 and 107. 

11 Linton, p. 283. 

12 Handy, p. 40. 

13 Linton, p. 286. 

14 Langsdorf, p, 119; Linton, p.274, quotes Petit-Thours who says there were 
raised platforms in the house reserved for the chiefs. 


4* 


52 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


stone statues!; carving, and ornamental sennit work. Two distinct 
methods were employed in the carving, the posts were either 
carved into human figures or decorated with non-naturalistic 
conventional designs. The end and front post of most eeremonial 
buildings and chiefs’ houses were carved to represent the human 
figure. (The carving on the end post usually faced inward.) The 
heads of these figures were cylindrical, with faces carved in low 
relief, and finished at the top with a narrow horizontal band, above 
which a cylindrical neck projected to support the ridge pole or 
stringer. The bodies and legs of the bho on the end posts were 
considerably elongated. 

The non-naturalistic designs’ were lightly incised on the flat 
surfaces, — the outer and inner sides of the front posts, the inside 
only of end posts. No two posts were identical, but a similarity 
of motif was observed throughout; both curvilinear and angular 
geometric designs, applied in horizontal zones of varying width, 
were used. When the two surfaces of the other sides of the end post 
were occasionally decorated, they were treated as separate units. 

Ornamental lashings’ of a flat three-strand sennit were used 
to attach the front post to the stringer, and all the posts to the 
rafters. These lashings® were red, and brown, and black (perhaps 
yellow and white)*. The designs were originated from string figures, 
by a special tuhuna. The houses were not painted’. Storehouses 
were elaborately decorated, sometimes with caryatid figures®. 
Houses were decorated on ceremonial occasions, with tapa streamers 
and peeled hibiscus poles. Pig skulls were often hung up inside the 
house’®. 

Maori House Building’. — Maori houses present a strong contrast 
between the elaborate houses of assembly, which were beautifully 
constructed and highly decorated; the whare puni, a well built but 
slightly decorated house; and the dwelling huts constructed of poles 
and thatch in which the people, sometimes even the chiefs for whom 
the great houses were built, lived!!. The essentials of the frame work, 
however, were the same for all these houses, yaist that in the 


1 Linton, p. 284; the ornamental masonry was confined to Nuka Hiva. 
2 Tbid., p. 286; Pl. xli, 

3 Tbid., p. 287. 

‘ Ibid., p. 290, 

5 Ibid., p. 290. 

f Stewart, A Visit to the South Seas, p. 336. 

7 Linton, p. 293. 

8 Linton, Personal correspondence. 

9 Linton, p. 284. 

10 As Herbert Williams’ account is incorporated in Hamilton, the page 
references are all to Hamilton, This section was written before the publica- 
tion of ‘‘The Maori’, and the author has not seen the Dominion Bulletin 
on The Maori Pa. 

at et ans Maori, Vol. IT, p. 560; Cook, I, pp. 191—197; Polack, I, pp. 
705 —708 


The House Building Complex 8 53 


poorer ones the broad barge boards! were sometimes”, but not 
always’, missing. The window, placed beside the door, seems to have 
been present in even the smallest houses”. The ground plan was 
oblong, the ends gabled, the sides low under the projecting eaves. 
The low doorway and window aperture opened out into a veranda’. 
On the Taranaki Coast, Hamilton® reports side doors and a side 
veranda, running the length of the house®. The smallest huts were 
eight to ten feet long and five to eight feet high. The ridge pole 
was attached to or inserted in two end posts, forked to receive it’. 
Small sticks were fastened to the frame with flax withes from the 
sides; over these was laid a covering of rushes and an outer thatch- 
ing of spear grass. The better class of these houses were lined with 
bark’, and some of them were sunk a foot or two below the surface- 
level of the ground’. The roof, which sloped in an angle of between 
thirty and forty-five degrees, projected in front to form a veranda, 
and was thatched with grass, over which light poles were placed 
to keep the thatch? in place. These small houses contained fireplaces 
also’. Indeed, there were no distinctions between these houses and 
the great carved houses, except in size, choice of materials, and 
decorations. Still ruder huts, only thatched on the windward sides, 
were used by travelers. The cook house, which was sometimes built 
in conjunction with several others; so that three or four were shelt- 
ered by one roof, (although each had its separate entrance’), were 
often constructed of tree-fern trunks". They were built by stretching 
a flat rush roof over four poles about five feet high!”. Circular houses 
were used as cooking houses in some places!®. Canoe houses were 
longer and sometimes presented a vaulted appearance. The cere- 
monial store-houses were raised on posts; and their small doors 
were contracted at the top. The model in the American Museum 
shows a floor of light poles with some little distance between each of 
the single poles!*, Store-houses were also made by excavating small 
caves in the side of a hill; although these were very rude in con- 
struction, they sometimes had a carved lintel!’. Raised platforms 
1 Broad boards facing the front of the gable. 

2 Hamilton, p. 99. 

3 Ibid., Plate XXV, Fig, 4. . 

* Best, op. cit. Vol. IT, p. 562: Tregear, p. 27 1G 

. Hamilton, p. 93. 

6 This appears to be the Marquesan type. 

7 Polack, I, p. 206. 

8 Cook, I, p. 191. 

® Tregear, p. 277. 

10 Marshall, W. B., p. 213. 

11 Best, The Maori, a p. 578, p, 588; Angas, IT, p. 125. 

42 Savage, p. 15. 

13 Best, op. cit. p. 588. 

14 Polack, Tp. 91. 

15 Hamilton, p. 91. 


16 A, M. N. H. Model 80.0/2897. 
17 Hamilton, p. 92. 


54 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


to contain firewood, fish nets, etc., were built near the cook 
house!. 

But the main effort and ingenuity of the Maori was expended on 
the whare whakatro, or carved house, which was often built as a 
memorial of some great event, such as a birth of an heir to the 
principal chief?. These houses varied in height from twelve to 
twenty feet®. The main weight of the ridge pole was borne by two 
heavy posts, the rear one slightly higher than the front. A central 
pillar, lighter than the end posts, supported the middle of the ridge 
pole*. These end posts might be either whole trunks of trees or 
slabs. The ridge pole was about ten feet longer than the house, in 
cross section an obtuse isosceles triangle, sometimes two or more 
feet across the base. The ridge pole was kept in place by stout pins’ 
driven through either side into the posts, by lashing to sunken 
eyes, and attachment to the rafters. The subsidiary end posts, 
which were of such height as to give the roof a pitch of about thirty 
to forty-five degrees, were graduated to correspond to the slope of the 
ridge pole. The ground plan of the house was squared by measuring 
the diagonals®. The side posts were really heavy planks, one to three 
feet wide, and three to nine inches thick, with rabbeted edges, and a 
semi-circular depression in the top to receive the rafters. They 
leaned slightly inwards and were buttressed behind by stout pieces 
of rough timber, which were lashed to eyes in the upper ends of the 
slabs®. The intervals between these slabs were a little wider than the 
slabs themselves. A slender stringer ran the length of the house and 
was lashed to notches or holes in each slab. The back slabs were 
similar to the side slabs, except that they stood upright. Their 
height was set by a wall plate, a board placed on its edge, which 
extended from one corner post to the other. Each end slab was 
lashed to this plate. A skirting board was formed by placing slabs 
horizontally in the intervals between the side slabs. They were 
rabbeted to fit flush with these side slabs. The rafters were cut into 
a tongue to fit the depression in the top of the side slabs, and were 
securely lashed to them. | 

Their upper ends were lashed together over the ridge pole, and 
sometimes supported a supplementary ridge pole. These rafters 
were flat on the outside and somewhat curved on the inside. Hori- 
zontal battens were lashed to the rafters, and a trellis work of 
reeds covered these. The front of the roof was finished by heavy 
barge boards, which rested on similar vertical facing boards, placed 
at the front edge of each side wall. The ends of these barge boards 


1 Best, The Maori, II, p. 578, p. 588; Angas, IT, p. 125. 

2 Hamilton, p. 79. 

3 Best, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 563; Polack, I, p. 205. 

4 Best, op. cit., II, p. 563; Tregear, pp. 271—272. 

> Best, op. cit., p. 563; Hamilton, pp, 82—84. 

6 Compare the Tahitian method of buttressing the reed sides with blocks 
of stone, p. 59. 


The House Building Complex D5 


projected beyond the house walls, and were carved in a conventional 
filigree pattern. The door was seldom more than two feet wide and 
four feet high. It consisted of a slab of wood about two inches 
thick, which slid along a grooved threshhold into a recess built 
into the wall. The threshold was a piece of timber, about twice 
the width of the door, and about a foot thick. Side jambs rested on 
this threshold and projected beyond it in each direction to form a 
molding. Across the top of the carved jambs was a richly carved 
lintel. The window, about two feet square, was similarly constructed. 
It was usually so highthat a man, sitting, could barely look out. The 
wall spaces between the side slabs were filled with flax mats, or with 
reed battens, the horizontal lathes, one-half to an inch wide, were 
lashed to the vertical reeds with colored grasses!. Horizontal bat- 
tens were laid across the back of these battens to keep them in 
place. The thatch was of bull-rushes placed over the reed work 
frame, which was securely lashed to the rafters. Further layers of 
coarse grass completed the thatch. Horizontal poles kept the thatch 
in place, and sometimes several of these were placed one above the 
other in different layers?. Vines and thick ropes were also used 
for this purpose*. The ridge pole was bonnetted by a row of fern 
fronds, or by a thick bundle of long grass, bound over the rear end 
of the ridge pole and securely lashed to the ridge pole and rafters?. 
As Maori houses were not built on stone foundations the floor was 
simply beaten earth, strewn with rushes and ferns.* The bed spaces 
on either side of the door were marked off by planks pegged to 
the floor, and filled with fern-fronds®. The fireplace was a hollow 
square enclosed either by a row of stones or by wood®. Each family 
group’ of houses was sometimes surrounded by a fence, made with 
posts inserted in the ground, to which horizontal rails were securely 
lashed. The whole village® was sometimes surrounded by a large 
fence of this character, with periodic large posts, carved to represent 
defiant warriors. The smaller posts were notched at the top, so asto 
resemble human heads®. A great variety of forms of barricades and 
excavated earthworks! were used. 

The functional division of houses was within the village group, 
rather than within the household; even the individual cook houses 


1 Hamilton, p. 85; Tregear, p. 272; Best, The Maori, II, p. 567. 

2 A.M. N. H. Model 80,0/2897. 

3 Hamilton, p. 85. 

*Thid.,:p. 87, 

5 Polack, I, pp. 165—166. 

6 Cook, I, p. 191. 

7 Best, The Maori, Vol. II, p. 335; Buller, p. 233; Hamilton, p. 72. 

8 A detailed mention of the Maori fortifications is omitted as there is no 
comparative material from some other parts of Polynesia. Best, op. cit., 

. 304, “ 
9 Bost, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 324; Hamilton, Plate XXV, Fig. 4. 
10 Colenso, T. N. Z.1., Vol. I, p. 350; Best, op. cit., Vol..2, chap, 15, passim. 


56. The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


sometimes being united in groups!. The great carved houses were 
sometimes divided into council chambers, sacred houses for the 
instruction of the young men, guest houses*, and houses where the 
whole tribe slept in time of war*. Store-houses were highly decorated 
and extremely taboo+. Special huts were erected for the initiation of 
the chief’s son into the priesthood®, and for the birth of a child of 
rank®, But a large number of specialized houses within the household 
establishment does not seem to have occurred, although chiefs had 
separate houses for their respective wives’. Store houses were tribal, 
the possession of the chief, or sometimes individual in the case of 
the rough, half-sunken house. Crozet® mentions three tribal store- 
houses, for arms, food, and nets. 

The materials for a new house were often collected months atone: 
as the bull-rushes had to be cut in the month of March, and the 
reeds carefully prepared. The ground was first leveled by the eye, 
and the builders then waited for the first rain, to show up depres- 
sions’. 

There were parts of the work which according to Polack! were 
done by thechiefs. Slaves and chiefs!! worked together on the same 
house. Carving was specialized tribally, and must have set the same 
premium on natural skill as in the case of canoe building. The chiefs 
directed the work of the party which went out to select timber!?. 

The priest divined the time for commencing operations, and 
performed “appropriate ceremonies’, and recited “‘proper Kara- 
kias’’ (chants) before its erection!*. He also performed the consecra- 
tion ceremony. In this ceremony the priest tied a sacred plant to 
the back center post, and held a bundle of sacred shrubs in his hand. 
The charms" followed a definite order, the first to propitiate Tane; 
the second, at which the priest ascended the roof!®, was to remove 
the taboo from the carver’s sacred instruments!’, and the wood 
carved into images of the gods. It was at this stage that the priest 
struck the various carvings of the house with the shrub which he held 


1 Marshall, p. 213. 

2 Tregear, p. 271 

3 Colenso, T. N. Zz. , Vol. I, p. 350; Best, The Maori, Vol. 2, chap. 15, passim. 
- Hamilton, p. 92; ’ Best, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 587. 

5 Tregear, J. R. iN ey, Vol. xix, p. 99. 

6 Tregear, The Maori Race, p. 27. 

7 Colenso, T. N. Z.I., Vol. I, p. 350. 

8 Quoted by Hamilton, p. 91. 

® Williams, H. P., J. P. 8. Vol. v, pp. 145—154. 

20 VOL, Pac20n. 

ABD ON 2. deg VOL, REL, ELD, 

12 Polack, I, p. 168. a 
13 Williams, p. 145. - 

14 Hamilton, p. 80, no details supplied; Best, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 587. 
15 Cowan, pp. 173176; Best, op. cit., Vol. II, p- 575. 

as Tregear, pp. 278—279, 

17 All the tools of the workers were placed above the barge boards. | 


The House Building Complex 57 


in his hand. The third incantation was an appeal to the gods to 
make the house warm. The whole ceremony was known as “binding 
the maro of the house.” The priest then entered the house! by a 
window and opened the door. The threshold was first crossed by 
three women of rank, so that food might be brought into the house?, 
and to keep the ridge pole from sagging!. Human sacrifices? were 
sometimes offered at the building of a great house, or the fence 
of an important pa. In the latter case a slave was buried under one 
of the posts*. In the former!, a member of the tribe was killed, some- 
times the favorite child of the chief, the heart was cut out and eaten, 
and the body buried beneath one of the posts.The particular post 
selected varied from tribe to tribe. Occasionally a distinguished 
captive was so sacrificed. 

The whole operation of building was taboo, no woman might 
enter the new house, and it was taboo to cook food on a fire made 
from chips from the sacred house carvings®. Sacred chiefs’ houses 
were taboo®, and any house which he entered became taboo*. 
Chiefs’ store-houses and kumara store-houses were taboo’. It was 
taboo to lean against the wall of a house® and the inner threshhold 
was taboo’. Elaborate knots to secure the door seem to have been 
substituted for the protective taboo!®. Food was never taken into 
the sacred houses!!, and usually not into dwellings!?. Chiefs were 
forced to eatin the open air’, for fear of tabooing a house. Kumara 
storehouses were especially sacred‘, and if a chief’s shadow fell on 
a food store", it hadto be destroyed. If by accident food was cooked 
on a fire made from sacred chips, food cooked on similar chips 
could be eaten by a woman of rank, and the damage repaired’®. 
Chiefs had to repair their own houses as no slaves could venture 
upon the roof, which had been above a chief’s sacred head’. 

The rank of a chief was emphasized more by the fact that he had 


1 Tregear, pp. 278—279. 

2 Cowan, p. 179. 

3 Best, The Maori, II, p. 576; Best, Maori poet and M ythology, Sec. I, 
p- 144, 

4 Hamilton, p. 73. 

5 Cowan, pp. 173—176; Best, op. cit., Vol. IT, p. 575. 

6 Williams, pp. 145—154. 

? Tregear, p. 157. 

8 Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the Maori, p. 112. 

® Tregear, p. 275. 

10 Thid., p. 199. 

11 Williams, J. P. 8. Vol. v, pp. 145—154. 

12 Hamilton, p. 72. 

13 Tregear, p. 194. 

14 Tbid., p. 157. 

be Brown, W. p. 14, says this was done forfearsome chief might subsequently 
enter the house. | 

16 Tregear, p. 278. 

17 Brown, W., p. 14. 


58 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


several houses than by the quality of any one of them!. The place 
of honour in a house was under a window?2, while the left hand corner 
(facing the house) was allotted to the slaves*. Slaves were forbidden 
to approach a kumara house*; women, however high their rank, 
could not enter the holy house of learning. Special rafter patterns 
were used on chief’s houses!, and Cowan? says possession of a carved 
house was one of the three indispensable attributes of rank. 

The decoration® of the Maori house can be subdivided into 
carving, rafter painting, and reed work. Sometimes the carving was 
painted, especially in the case of the heavily carved slabs over the 
door and window, and in the case of store-houses. When carving did 
occur in ordinary dwellings it was on the barge-boards, the vertical 
facing boards, and sometimes on the broad piece of timber which 
faced the front of the veranda. A carved face was placed over the 
junction of the barge boards, and occasionally a human figure 
placed above this. The projecting end of the ridge pole was some- 
times carved. Storehouses were carved all over on the outside. Each 
separate panel of wood was treated as a decorative unit. 

The outside was carved as described above, more elaborately in 
the case of the large houses. In the large houses these slabs were 
carved on the inside in high relief into conventionalized human fig- 
ures. A small human figure was carved in the round at the foot of 
the center pole. The panels in between the side slabs were decorated | 
with reed work in elaborate step and checker patterns. These were 
occasionally modified in an attempt to approximate to the designs 
of the slab carvings. The rafters were painted in red and white | 
curvilinear designs. The carving was decorated with inlaid haliotis 
shell.” 

The style was characterized as in the case of canoe carving by 
extensive use of the double scroll, combined with conventionaliza- 
tions of the human figure, a tendency to intricate incidental decora- 
tion and towards treating the part of the object decorated as a unit. 
House carvings were occasionally decorated with feathers, and 
shrubs were sometimes planted around them. 

House Building In Tahiti. — The typical Tahitian house was 
oval’, covering, according to Cook, a space twenty-four feet by 
eleven feet, according to Wilkes, fifty to sixty by twenty feet. The 
guest house was sometimes 200 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 20 feet 
high at the ridge pole®. In addition to its oval shape, the most 


1 Colenso, T. N. Z. I. Vol. i, pp. 755—757. 

2 Williams, p. 151. 

3 Hamilton, p. 105. 

4 Tregear, p. 157. 

5 Page 163, but this may have been in a tribal sense. See, Polack, II, 
page 205. : 

6 Hamilton, Plates. 

? Tregear, p. 273. 

8 Cook, I, p. 83; Wilkes, I, p. 142. 

9 Cook, loc. cit. 


The House Building Complex 59 


characteristic feature of the Tahitian house was the extra row of 
pillars in the center which supported the ridge pole!. But this seems 
to have occured only in the larger houses, as Hugenin’s drawing? 
shows instead three strong transverse rafters, on which rest extra 
posts extending up to the ridge pole. Forster! says this middle row 
of posts contained posts 20 feet high in the large houses, and 8—10 
feet in the smaller ones. The smallest houses were almost round, and 
the longest ones approximated an oblong, rather than an oval. The 
cook house was oblong, as were the canoe sheds. The ridge pole was 
about nine inches in diameter, and triangular in cross section; 
Square mortices were made to receive the tenons, forming the tops 
of the ends posts*. Tahitian houses ordinarily had floors of trampled 
earth*. Houses near the sea were sometimes raised on blocks of 
coral or wooden piles®, and rectangular stone platforms® were some- 
times used. Blocks of stone® were occasionally put at the foot of the 
bamboo walls to give them stability. The side posts were placed 
about three or four feet apart, and grooves six to eight inches in 
depth and an inch to an inch and a half wide were cut in the top of 
each post to receive the wall plate, a board eight or nine inches 
broad, beveled on its upper edge. Hugenin’s drawing? shows two 
straight wall pieces extending along the front and back of the house, 
and curved wall plates, resting on posts of regularly decreasing 
height, extending around each end. Cook’ gives the height of the 
shortest post as three and a half feet, when the ridge pole is nine 
feet from the ground. The rafters were notched about 18 inches 
from the end to receive the wall plates’, thus forming eaves about 
a foot and a half in extent. Parallel rafters were placed on each side 
of the roof, a supplementary ridge pole was placed in the inter- 
section and the whole tied firmly together and to pegs inserted in the 
main ridge pole. The walls of the house® were made of light poles, 
two or three inches in diameter. These were planted about two or 
three inches apart, in a trench about a foot deep, until the building 
was completely enclosed except for the door space. Two or three 
light sticks were tied horizontally on the outside. (Cook® says the 
dwelling house had no walls.) The door! was a light trellis frame of 
bamboo, suspended by a number of braided thongs, from a long 
cane in the upper part of the inside of the wall plate. These thongs 
slid back and forth like curtain rings. 


1 Forster, G., pp. 455—456. 

2 Page 115. 

3 Ellis, I, p. 384. 

4 Tbid. 

5 Hugenin, p. 117. 

6 Linton, p. 450. 

7 Cook, I, p. 83. 

8 Ellis, I, pp. 384—388; Hugenin, pp. 113—115. 
® Loc. cit. 

10 Klis, I, p. 389. 


60 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


The house was thatched! with pandanus leaves, which were 
doubled ‘‘about one-third of the way from the stalk, over a strong 
reed or cane, about six feet long, and the folded leaf laced together 
with the stiff stalks of the cocoa-nut leaflets.” These were sewn to 
cords stretched from rafter to rafter and each series of three was 
firmly bound to therafters with sennit. The ridge pole was bonnetted 
by placing a row of large cocoa-nut or fern leaves along the ridge, 
and weaving in a species of long grass. Hugenin’s? figure of a house 
raised on posts, shows a veranda similar to that found in the Mar- 
quesas, but as this house has a plank floor, this may be due to 
European influence. Every chief’s house was surrounded by a fence, 
about four feet high, constructed of upright sticks, surmounted by a 
polished rail!. The court yard was paved with black basalt pebbles 
or ground coral. The floor of beaten earth was. covered with long 
dry grass or mats’. Wilkes* speaks of cane bed-steads and occa- 
sional screens of tapa. Cook describes the small portable houses 
which were used as sleeping houses by the chiefs, and carried from 
place to place on the canoe. The cook house® was a simple rectan- 
gular structure. In the canoe house the rafters and side poles were 
formed of one piece, giving a vaulted effect®. These were occasionally 
used as dwelling houses. Forster? mentions small houses shaped like 
hurdles erected within the house. Houses for childbirth were of this 
nature’. Although information is not very specific, there seem to 
have been eating houses for men and women?. Moerenhout mentions 
a special house for tapa making!°. An important feature of the Tahi- 
tian village was the guest house, which was used as a place of 
assembly also; and was capable of holding several hundred people". 
In this house the members of the Areois Society were accommodated, 
and there they gave their dramatic performances. Wilson™ suggests 
the presence of several guest houses in a village, for the accommoda- 
tion of individual visitors of rank. Ellis describes one of these guest 
houses in Pare, which was 397 feet long, and belonged to the king. 
These great houses are reported to have had a long enclosure at 
one side}. 


1 Hillis, I, p. 389. 
2 Page 18. 
Wilson, p. 331; Cook, I, p.83, says that the floor was covered six inches 
3 deep with mats, and that there were no special bed places. 
4 Vol. I, p. 342; this is probably a modern development. 
: Hugenin, p. 114. 
6 Parkinson, PI. xii. 
7 Page 465. 
8 Wilson, p. 341. 
® Ellis, I, p. 222; Wilson, p. 331. 
10 Vol. II, p. 92. 
11 Cook, I, p. 83; Wilson, p. 350; Ellis, I, p. 388. 
12 Page 350. 
13 Cook, I, p. 83. 


The House Building Complex - 6] 


There are no records of the procedure of house building in Tahiti 
except Hugenin’s remark! that district houses and chief’s houses 
were built by a general levy. This statement corresponds to Wil- 
son’s description of canoe building?. 

Our information about craft division is also scanty. Ellis? and 
Moerenhout* speak of patron gods of carpenters and of thatchers. 
Ellis mentions that the difficult tasks in house building were the 
thatching of the angles and the bonnetting of the ridge poles®, and 
that regularly trained men were called in to do this work. Women 
made the thatching mats°®. 

The only priestly function recorded is that of the sacrificing 
priest who officiated when a new house was built for the king or a 
temple erected. It was this priest who selected a victim from the 
assembled crowd’. 

Kilis® reports that prayers were offered before building a new 
house, but gives no details. The houses of chiefs and priests® were 
taboo, and the houses of the men were taboo to the women!®, A 
special opening was made in the side of the house through which 
the food of a new born child was passed, because the food of a child 
could not enter by the same door as the food of a mother". 

The houses of the chiefs were built by the tenant class!*, and 
chief’s houses as well as public buildings had special ornamental 
sennit decorations on the inside of the rafters!®. Chiefs’ houses had 
high enclosures around them, and paved court yards’. Chiefs slept 
sometimes in small collapsible dwellings, which they took with 
them on canoe journeys". 

Nothing is known of the decoration of Tahitian houses, except 
Ellis’s statement® that braided sennit cords or finely fringed white 
or checkered matting decorated the rafters of public buildings and 
chiefs’ houses. These seem to have been streamers which hung down 
twelve or thirteen inches, a quite different style of decoration from 
the sennit lashings of Hawaii and the Marquesas. 


House Building in Samoa. — There are two forms of Samoan 
house, — the round house with the roof supported by one to four 
1 Page 117. 

2 Page 281. 


3 Ellis, IT, pp. 199—200. 

4 Moerenhout, I, p. 452. 

5 Vol. I, p. 386. 

6 Hugenin, p. 113. 

7 Tyerman and Bennett, Vol. IT, p. 181; Ellis, II, p. 212. 

8 Vol. II, p. 216. 

® Moerenhout, I, p. 532. 

10 Ellis, I, p. 271; but Wilson, p. 351, speaks of men and women keeping to 
different ends of the house when they ate in the same house. 

11 Wilson, p. 351. 

12 Wilson, p. 324; Forster, p. 356. 

13 Ellis, Vol. I, p. 386. 

14 Cook, I p. 83. 


62 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


strong central posts; and the long house, in which the longer roof is 
supported by additional lines of heavy pillars inside the house. 
Both forms have high pitched thatch roofs resting on short pillars 
four to five feet in height. The house floor is raised eight to twelve 
inches by a platform of small round stones dressed with carefully 
chosen bits of coral. In the case of large round houses belonging to 
chiefs, the house was placed in the center of a series of shallow 
terraces six or seven inches high, one to three feet wide, and faced 
_ with squared coral blocks. The fireplace was built near the center 
of the house!; sometimes there were two fireplaces, one on each side 
of the center post. It was a circular hollow, lined with hard clay, 
two or three feet in diameter, and occasionally enclosed with stones. 

The basis of the framework? of a round house was one to four 
strong center poles, about twenty-five feet in height, supporting a 
ridge pole, from which heavy rafters extended to the side posts. 
These rafters were held in place by rounded beams, lashed on at 
intervals. These beams were semi-circular at the ends of the house. 
Small battens, adzed from bread-fruit wood, and jointed together, 
filled the spaces between the rafters in rows of six. A peculiar 
feature of the round house was the construction of the roof in such 
a way that it could be taken apart, usually in three pieces, — the 
center piece in which the rafters were parallel to each other, and the 
two ends in which the rafters were curved. These pieces were ele- 
vated on the basic three-piece ridge pole frame work and lashed to 
the lower pole and to each other. When the long house form was 
used, a cross section of the frame-work shows a cross beam resting 
on rows of high side posts. This beam supported stout uprights on 
which rested the ridge pole. The Samoan house had no walls as a 
usual thing, but instead blinds of plaited cocoa-nut leaves were let 
down between the posts, and rolled up in the day time. Occasionally 
the sides of the houses were partly walled with mats of bamboo 
attached to sticks planted upright in the ground and lashed to the 
eaves‘, The small temporary house’, still erected in the bush, had a 
span roof and the simplest form had only one side, slanting from 
ridge pole to ground, thatched in. This resembles the small house 
used on the double canoes®. Fishermen’s huts were also of the one- 
sided type. The cookhouse was of the simplest rectangular form’, 
square at the ends and thatched with palm leaves. 


1 Turner, p. 156; Wilkes, I, p. 100. 

2 Hood, pp. 31—33; Kramer, II, pp. 223, 228; Brown, p. 25; Stair, p: 106. 

3 Stair, p. 106, says the long house was imported from Tonga in recent times. 
These Tongan houses were oblong with the two ends closed; the roof sloped 
to pillars about four feet high. See Mariner, I, p. 195. But the Tutuila 
tradition insists that the round house is the more recent. 

4 Brown, p. 334. 

5 Kramer, II, p. 222. 

6 Tbid., p. 251. 

7 Ibid., p. 223. 


The House Building Complex 63 


The thatch! was made by stringing dried sugar cane leaves on 
pieces of reed about five feet long, and fastening them by ‘‘overlap- 
ping one end of the leaf, and pinning it with the ribs of the cocoa- 
nut leaflet, run through horizontally from leaf to leaf.’’ These mats 
were three or four feet deep, and each one overlapped the next an 
inch or two. The thatching was begun at the eaves, and fastened to 
the inner rafters with sennit; bonnetting was accomplished by broad 
palm leaf mats?. A net work of sennit or more often of cocoa-nut 
leaves was laid over the thatch to keep it from blowing*. The house 
was occasionally partitioned by curtains of bark cloth, six or eight 
feet deep. At night mosquito tents of tapa* strung on strings of 
sennit across the end of a house were suspended from the rafters 
and distended by bent sticks®. Houses of chiefs are said to have been 
surrounded by a high double fence, the outer one of stout posts, and 
the inner one of reeds. A zigzag entrance, several feet long, pene- 
trated this enclosure®. 

The specialization of houses was not carried to such an extent 
in Samoa, within the household establishment itself. The great 
houses’ which served as guest houses and council chambers, occupied 
the most important position in the village. A number of the cast-off 
wives of chiefs were attached to this house for the convenience of 
travelers’. These houses were also used as sleeping places for the 
young men of the village’, although sometimes they built themselves 
an insubstantial house on piles out over the water!®. Each family had 
a cooking house attached to the establishment". A chief’s establish- 
ment contained one large house and several smaller houses for his 
family and retainers®. There were also canoe houses which were 
very long, triangular in cross-section, and thatched to the ground. 
Special houses were erected for tattooing. The guest houses of the 
principal chiefs were located near the village green, the malae, while 
the smaller houses and outhouses were set back from these more 
pretentious dwellings. Some Samoan villages were surrounded by 
rough stone walls to keep out the pigs. 

The procedure of house building was similar to that of canoe 
building. The man who wished to have a house built took an initial 
gift of food to a recognized carpenter. The carpenter, if he wished 
to take the contract, accepted the food and invited certain lesser 
craftsmen and young men of his household to eat it with him. This 


1 Turner, pp. 153—154. 

2 Kramer, I, p. 226, Bild 88. 
*Abid.; p. 237. 

4 Stair, p. 105. 

5 Brown, p. 26. 

§ Thid. 

7 Wilkes, I, p. 203; Kramer, IT, p. 225. 
8 Pritchard, p. 132. 

9 Stair, p. 109—110. 

10 Churchward, p. 319. 

™ Brown, p. 130; Turner, p. 112. 


64 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


constituted an invitation to help him with the construction of the 
house. Kava ceremonies, feasts and payments of tapa and fine mats 
punctuated the construction at regular intervals, culminating in the 
Umu Sa, or “Sacred Oven’’, when the last payments were made, and 
all the carpenters in the village came to participate in the festivities. 
The kava was drunk in the name of the particular god of carpenters, 
and the courtesy titles of the carpenters were recited. At. this cer- 
emony the chief officiating carpenter, whatever his rank in the 
social structure of the village, had to be addressed with the most 
extreme courtesy phrases. The Umu Sa made a Samoan house 
socially existent. It had no real religious significance but is analogous 
functionally to the religious ceremonies in other areas. 

At the marriage of a chief, the whole community combined to 
build the stone platform for his new house!, which was given as a | 
gift to the bride. Craft lines were more rigid than among the canoe 
builders?. If the workers were not satisfied with the recompense they 
received, they removed one beam in the roof, making a conspicuous 
gap which no other worker dared to fill®. 4 

No religious rites are recorded. Human sacrifices do not appear 
to have occurred. The taboo eating houses for men and women do not 
occur, and although a separate cook-house existed, it had lost its 
significance, for men of rank participated in cooking’. The dwelling 
houses of certain of the highest chiefs were sacred from intrusion?. 
It was taboo to stand up in a canoe, or to carry a lighted torch 
while passing a chief’s house®. The rank of a chief was indicated by 
the size of his principal house®, the height and number of terraces 
in the platform, and the number of cross beams which supported 
the roof as well as by the quality of the wood and the general 
workmanship. Chiefs’ establishments were formerly surrounded by 
high palisades’. A temporary partition was made by placing a 
partly unrolled upright belt of matting around the spot where the 
chief slept®, and certain high chiefs had raised bed places at one 
end of the house, the main part of the elevation being accomplished 
by an enormous number of mats. This bed place was faced with two 
or three strips of bamboo. 

The Samoan houses were very little deasmaay and the whole ar- 
tistic emphasis was on beauty of workmanship. The small rafters 
were sometimes alternately of dark and light shades®, and the aim 
of the Samoan craftsman was to make his roof like the rainbow”. 


1 Stair, p. 111; Churchward, p. 320. 
* Stair, p. 156; Brown, pp. 305—306. 
3 Brown, p. 307. 
4 Turner, p. 112. 
5 Brown, pp. 181—182. 
6 Tbid., p. 25. 
7 Thid., p. 243. 
® Stam, p.. 111; 
® Hood, p. 32. 
nae Brown, p. 25. 


The House Building Complex 65 


The only decorations were sennit lashings, an ornamental elabora- 
tion of the necessary lashings at the top of each post where it was 
joined to a rafter and on the cross beams in the center of the house. 
The principal preoccupation of the artist was to make each lashing 
a little different from the last. The use of brightly colored lashings! 
and of paint in the vacant spaces to offset the lashed patterns is 
probably of recent introduction. 


ANALYSIS OF HOUSE BUILDING. 


The houses have certain basic features in common throughout the 
five groups. The use of the heavy ridge pole, resting on two or more 
supporting posts, and the roof, based on rafters running from the 
ridge pole to the side posts was found throughout the area. Doors, 
when they occurred, were constructed so as to slide. The bonnetting 
of the roof was accomplished by using a supplementary ridge pole. 
Wood was used for the frame work throughout, although in the 
temporary Maori structures very light reed was used. Lashing was 
the principal device used in attaching the parts to each other. The 
small temporary house, triangular in cross section, was very similar 
in form. The principal variation in the form of the small house was 
in the choice of material, in which case it then conformed to the 
prevalent usage of each particular group. Some form of specialization 
in house building, particularly the thatching of the ridge and some 
ceremony or taboos occur in all five cultures. The connection with 
rank is close but highly variable. An aesthetic premium was set 
upon some aspect of the construction of the house, but important 
decoration did not occur in all cases. 

The variations in the house itself were due to changes in form, 
rather than to the introduction of any new mechanical principles. 
Functional changes were few in number. In Hawaii the use of eaves 
was unknown, and in consequence the Hawaiians had developed an 
elaborate method of thatching the inner section of roof and walls. 
The Hawaiian builder bound the basic framework of his house 
tightly with ropes, and counted on the spring resulting from releas- 
ing this tension, to tighten the lashings and give stability to the 
whole structure. The Hawaiian ridge pole was shorter than the 
distance between the feet of the end posts, so that the walls slanted 
inwards. In the Maori house the ridge pole slanted toward the front 
of the house to let the smoke escape, the side posts were graduated 
accordingly, and slanted somewhat inward; they were buttressed 
with extra slabs. In Tahiti the sides of the house were similarly 
reinforced with blocks of stone. In the Samoan house the lack of 
permanent walls eliminated the specific door space and door adapta- 
tion, while in Tahiti the door was a mat which slid along a horizontal 
rod like a curtain. The side posts were grooved to receive the rafters. 


1 Handy, Samoan Housebuilding, pp. 13—14. 


5 


66 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


The veranda was found in Hawaii, — sometimes as a separate 
structure, — and in the Marquesas and New Zealand, where it was 
an integral part of the house. Maori houses sometimes had verandas 
at each end, and for one district side verandas are reported. Real 
windows occurred only in New Zealand, though appertures for 
passing in food were left in Tahitian houses. Fireplaces, sunk in the 
floor, and walled in by stones, were used in dwelling houses every- 
where, except in the Marquesas. Houses on piles were used as store 
houses in New Zealand, as store and ceremonial houses in the 
Marquesas, as practical shelter against flood in Tahiti and Hawaii, 
and, built out over the water, served as bachelors’ sleeping quarters 
in Samoa. The methods of thatching varied considerably, prin- 
cipally in response to the available materials, although three separate 
methods, using as many kinds of material, are reported for the Mar- 
quesas. The fabrication of long thatching mats by pinning leaves 
over long reeds, and the application of these mats to the framework, 
producing a shingled effect, was similar in Samoa, Tahiti, and the 
Marquesas. The Maori used the groundwork of reeds, upon which 
raupo rush thatching was superimposed, and the Hawaiians used 
grass entirely. A thick bundle of grass was used as the unit. Maori 
houses were sometimes lined with bark, and Hawaiian with leaves. 
In Samoa, Hawaii, and Tahiti the ridge was bonnetted by braiding 
the thatching material with fern fronds, or by mats; in New Zealand 
long rows of grass were used. Heavy mats were used in Samoa and 
the Marquesas, — in the latter case these were skewered to the 
frame with wooden splints. In the construction of the walls there 
was considerable variation, from the Hawaiian house with its com- 
plete covering of thatch, exceptfor the door space, through the partly 
thatched, partly woven, movable panels of the Marquesan house, 
the permanent reed walls of Tahiti, the heavily carved paneled 
Maori house walls, to the use of light mats which rolled up like 
awnings in Samoa. Platforms of stone were used sometimes in 
Hawaii, always in the Marquesas, occasionally in Tahiti and Samoa, 
but have not been recorded in New Zealand. Fences occured fre- 
quently in Hawaii, around chiefs’ houses in Tahiti, and around 
groups of houses and also around the whole village in New Zealand. 

Aside from the variations in the kind of material used, the 
greatest diversity was in the form of the house, which had under- 
gone a unique development in each group, although the occurence 
to the present day of the small temporary house, triangular in 
cross section, in all the groups seems to suggest a possible unity 
of original form. The Hawaiians had developed a hipped roof, and 
this feature, together with the completely thatched walls, served 
to individualize the Hawaiian house. In the Marquesas the rear 
roof sloped steeply from ridge pole to ground, while the front roof 
was raised on short pillars. Among the Maori the Hawaiian type 
had been modified by the use of wooden planked walls, the broad 


The House Building Complex 67 


barge boards facing the gable and the edges of the front walls, the 
projection of the ridge pole, and the introduction of a window. 
In Tahiti the houses were oblong with rounded ends, the end posts 
being graduated in height and lower than the side posts. The walls 
were of reeds planted in the earth, and the door a mat which slid 
on a horizontal rod. The Samoan house, although possessing the 
fundamental structural form of a ridge pole on two or more posts, 
with rafters extending from it, was round or eliptical in ground 
plan. The horizontal beams used in the construction of the roof 
were curved. Still more variety is noticeable in the form of the 
special houses, such as the cook house, which was triangular in 
cross section in the Marquesas, rectangular and gabled in Samoa 
and Tahiti, and flat roofed in New Zealand; or the storehouses on 
piles which are found in New Zealand, Samoa and the Marquesas. 

The amount of division of houses by function varied enormously. 
The separate cook house is omnipresent, in New Zealand several 
sometimes being united under one roof, but in Samoa it had quite 
lost its original segregative purpose as men and even chiefs took 
part in the cooking, and men and women ate together. The speciali- 
zation of buildings within the household was most highly developed 
in Hawaii, where five separate buildings represented the minimum 
at which respectability could be maintained, and specialization 
within the village reached its height in New Zealand. Hawaiian 
houses contained lattice floored garrets, which were used as store- 
houses; the Marquesans built raised store-houses on piles, in which 
taboo men ate and slept and boys were ceremonially instructed. 
In the Maori village these raised storehouses held different types of 
sacred articles. The Marquesans seem to have had separate houses 
where the men gathered for ceremonial activities, and they also 
had a warriors’ house in the chief’s establishment. The canoe house 
performed a similar function in Hawaii, while the guest house in 
Samoa was sometimes used as a bachelors’ club house, though 
occasionally special houses were constructed for this purpose. The 
use of the guest house was most highly developed in Samoa, where 
it was the socio-ceremonial center of the village, and in Tahiti and 
New Zealand. It seems to have been relatively unimportant in 
Hawaii. The usage in regard to construction of temporary houses 
for different special occasions varied still more. No special birth 
houses are recorded even for the birth of children of rank in Hawaii 
and Samoa; it was used in the other three groups, but erected inside 
the house in Tahiti. Special houses for tattooing were built in the 
Marquesas and Samoa, and for the use of the workers on a canoe or 
house in New Zealand and the Marquesas. 

The status of the craftsmen was extremely variable. In Hawaii 
there were no organized groups of builders, but each village possess- 
ed one or two semi-professional carpenters, who knew the specifica- 
tions for a house and were expert in bonnetting the ridge and per- 


5* 


68 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


forming the other difficult parts of the thatching; but the bulk of 
the work was done by the future owner and his relatives. In the 
Marquesas the chief carpenter enjoyed considerable prestige and 
even performed some of the ceremonies. The heavy work was done 
by relatives and friends of the future owner under the carpenter’s 
direction. All the workmen were taboo during the operation. The 
chiefs seem to have exercised considerable executive functions in 
New Zealand, supervising the cutting of the trees, and even working 
on the houses themselves. A good deal of the rougher work was done 
by slaves, and specialization seems to have been more particularly 
limited to the decoration of the house. In Tahiti the feudal regula- 
tions seem to have been in force in the construction of houses of any 
size. The thatchers and the carpenters were distinct groups, but our 
information for this aspect of Tahitian culture is too scanty for 
useful comparisons. As in the case of the canoe builders, the Samoan 
carpenters enjoyed great power and prestige. Their engagement and 
payment amounted to a ritual, their emoluments were tremendous. 
A system of apprenticeship had been developed, and their profes- 
sional consciousness was articulate to the point of disciplining 
recalcitrants. 3 

The priests in Hawaii divined the suitability of the house site, 
and possessed the final veto power upon the finished house. He 
could be engaged to avert the evil inherent in faulty construction, 
and this fact makes it somewhat ambiguous as to whether he con- 
demned technical or religious deficiencies in the new structure. He 
also slept in the new house and performed the consecration ceremony. 
In the Marquesas, the priest officiated at the beginning and at the 
completion of a new house, chanting the Pu’e, and making offerings. 
His functions seem to have been concomitant with those of the 
chief builder and his relation to the “‘feast of entrance” is not record- 
ed. Among the Maori the priests also divined the house site, recited 
chants during the progress of the work, and performed the consecra- 
tion ceremony. But this ceremony was only made complete by the 
offices of women of rank, who must first “trample the threshold.” 
Furthermore, if any serious infractions of the taboos incident to 
house building or houses occurred, although the priest performed 
the routine ceremonial work, the food which was to remove the 
taboo had to be ceremonially eaten by a woman of rank. In Tahiti 
the priest officiated in offering the human sacrifices at the building 
of the king’s house, and in Samoa he had no function. 

The consecration feast, with a priest officiating, occurred in 
the Marquesas, Hawaii, and New Zealand, but with different empha- 
sis in the last two cases for which we have details. Among the Maori 
the stress was laid on the removing of taboos connected with the 
sacred wood, in freeing the tools and the workers from taboo, and 
‘in binding the sacred maro of the house,’ —i.e., in assuring warmth 
to the future inmates. In Hawaii the ceremonies were directed 


The House Building Complex 69 


against Ent evil occupants who were conceived as already in 
residence, and “in cutting the navel cord” of the new house. In 
the Marquesas the workers were taboo and had to be consecrated 
to the labor, but no details are given neither of this nor of the 
entrance feast. 

Human sacrifices were offered in Hawaii, in the Wiardieens where 
they were obtained by organized raids, among the Maori where 
a chief’s child or a distinguished captive was occasionally slain, and 
in Tahiti where the victim was selected from the assembled crowd. 
Human sacrifices did not occur in Samoa in connection with house 
building. The variation was in the type of victim chosen and from 
this point of view the practices in New Zealand, the Marquesas and 
Tahiti are distinctly incomparable. 

The taboos connected with the building of the house and with 
the house itself were almost completely variable. Taboo eating- 
houses for men occurred in Hawaii and the Marquesas, and for men 
and for women in Hawaii and Tahiti, although this regime was not 
so strictly enforced in Tahiti. In Hawaii this motive was combined 
with the tabooed cook house and in New Zealand the cook houses 
were entered only by women and slaves, while in Samoa the still 
separate cook house was freely entered by men of all ranks. The 
need for the segregation of men at certain times, in Hawaii, when 
engaged in certain activities in the Marquesas, was obtained by 
taboo houses, but the segregation of the unmarried men in Samoa 
was a casual and voluntary affair, surrounded with no such sancti- 
ties. Storehouses were taboo among the Maori because they con- 
tained food, in the Marquesas if they contained the food of tabooed 
men. The Hawaiian house was protected in the owner’s absence by a 
taboo sign, in New Zealand by ingenious and difficult knots. The 
threshold and walls of the Maori house were taboo; the mats on 
the front of the bed were taboo to men in the Marquesas. Examples 
might be multiplied indefinitely to show how this basic conception 
of taboo attached itself to any and every aspect of the house in 
different groups. Removal of taboo was effected in New Zealand 
by food ceremonies, in Hawaii by sacrificing to the gods of the 
officiating priesthood. 

-The connection with rank was immediate and logically determin- 
ed. In all the groups the chiefs had the ability to possess finer 
houses than those of the other members of the tribe, either by 
virtue of the possession of greater wealth or by their claims on 
communal labor. In Hawaii their houses were better built and more 
ornamented; and the principal chiefs had carpenters among their 
retainers. Materials might be requisitioned from the tenants, and 
they in turn had a lien on the materials on their chief’s land... Taxes 
might also be remitted in return for good materials. In the Mar- 
quesas the chief’s establishment, besides being much more elabo- 
rately ornamented, was the center of the community life, possessing 


70 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


houses for his dependents, a special dance platform, a warriors’ 
house, and a canoe house. In New Zealand a strange perversion of 
this tendency occurred. The great carved house, built to commemo- 
rate the birth of an heir to the principal chief, was conceived as the 
property of the chief; but he did not live in it, living instead in a 
small hut very little better, though perhaps slightly more decorated, 
than those of his fellow tribesmen. His store house was often es- 
pecially decorated. Also, chiefs, because of their sacred character, 
had to perform certain parts of the work of house building, and were 
required to do all the work in constructing the house for the initia- 
tion of a priest’s son. Ceremonial functions in this connection be- 
longed to women of rank also. The Tahitian chief owned a large 
guest house, from which he often had to retire in order to accommo- 
date his visitors. His establishment boasted several houses for 
different members of his family, was surrounded by a paved court- 
yard and a high fence, with the main house especially ornamented 
in a style similar to that of the guest house. Houses of chiefs were 
built by special levy. In Samoa the whole village united in building 
the platform for the new house of the chief. The reciprocal economic 
relations between a chief and a talking chief enabled him to pay the 
workers for his larger, better constructed house. Thus the connec- 
tion between houses and rank is more intimate and universal than 
in the case of canoe building, but the psychology underlying the 
chief’s possession of a better house had undergone a special develop- 
ment in each group. 

The houses of all these cultures may be conceived as representing 
definite artistic attempts, only if perfection of workmanship and 
beauty of structure be included as well as actual decoration in the 
form of carving, paneling or sennit lashings. Colored sennit was 
used in Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and recently in Samoa, — 
being the sole decoration in Hawaii, and used in streamers in 
Tahiti. Carving occurred only in New Zealand and the Marquesas; 
but here, although the likeness between the two groups when 
contrasted with other parts of the area is striking and significant, 
the two styles are distinctive and unmistakable. The Maori painting 
of carved work is unique!, as are the patterned reed panels. The 
Samoan emphasis on perfection of structure is also a special develop- 
ment, being paralleled to some extent by the stress on durability in 
Hawaii, size in Tahiti, and actual decoration in the Marquesas and 
New Zealand. 


1 Only one painted house is reported in the Marquesas. Linton, R., Personal 
correspondence, 


Se 


THE TATTOOING COMPLEX 


DESCRIPTION. 


Tattooing in Hawai. — Tattooing was very slightly developed 
in Hawaii and the information is exceedingly scanty. Many of the 
early travellers do not even mention it, and those who do!, comment 
upon the infrequency of the custom and the crudity of the design 
as compared with the tattooing in other groups. 

The instruments used are not described in detail, but seem to 
have resembled those used thoughout the area. Ellis? says the © 
instrument was one-quarter of an inch wide, and set with small fish 
bones, and Meinicke® says there were three of these teeth. A round 
stick of wood was used as a mallet*. The pigment was made from 
the burnt aleurities, or candle-nut®. The design was faintly sketched 
in first; the instrument was dipped in the dye and then applied to 
the skin®. Legs, arms®, trunk’, (at least the front of the trunk), face, 
lips*, and hands were sometimes all tattooed. The selection of the 
tongue for mourning tattooing is typically’ Hawaiian’. It was 
sometimes the custom to tattoo alternate arms and legs’. 

There is no information available concerning the craftsmen, 
except a comment on their lack of skill“. Although the tattooing 
was performed very early in life!!, it is not known what relation 
it had to other aspects of puberty. The principal religious ram- 
ifications seem to have been the use of mourning tattoo marks, par- 
ticularly on the tongue!”. These marks were tattooed after a death; 
and when writing was introduced, the name of the dead king or 
relative was tattooed across the breast!®. Alexander™ says the women 


1 Ellis, Journal, p. 151; Bennet, Vol. I, p. 212; Remy, p. 15; Alexander, 
Brief History, p. 86; Meinicke, Vol. Tl, p- 293; Tyerman and Bennet, 
Vol. IT, p. 24. 

be Journal, pp. 136—137. 

3 Vol. II, p. 293. 

4 Roth, Artificial Skin Markings of the Sandwich Islanders, p. 200. 

. Eveleth, p- 43. 

6 Kramer, Hawaii, Ostmikronesien und Samoa, p. 93; Roth, Op. Cit., p.199, 
reproduction from Choris; Tyerman and Bennet, loc. cit. ; Dixon, Gs p. 98. 

7 Mager, p. 94. 

8 Ellis, op. cit., p. 134. 

® Thid., p. 136. 

s Alexander, op. cit., p. 

11 Tyerman and Bennet, Vol II, p. 24. 

12 Ellis, op. cit., p. 136, ‘and p. 151; Byron, p.136; Alexander, op.cit., p. 86. 

as Kramer, op. cit., p- 93. 

14 Op. cit., p. 56. 


72 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


sometimes had the back of the hands tattooed, and Byron! says the 
women tattooed the tips of their tongues in mourning. No other 
sex differences are recorded. 

One very definite connection with rank occurred, the outcast 
Kauwa, (slave) class were tattooed on the forehead?. King*, speaks 
of property marks tattooed on the persons of the lower classes, and 
Eveleth*, says tattoo marks served as a badge to distinguish the 
retainers of different chiefs. These statements may refer to the same 
phenomenon, the branding of the Kauwa. The chiefs were all 
tattooed on the tongue in the case of a death in the royal family®. 

The designs were of two types, free realistic representations and 
very simple geometric patterns. These latter resembled textile 
patterns and in one representation® the design seems to be a copy 
of a basketry effect, rather than a simple transfer of design. Small 
triangles arranged with their bases along vertical lines were used 
on the legs’. Intersecting straight lines seem to have been the com- 
monest pattern’. A variety of realistic forms, trees, shrubs, birds, 
etc., were also used in fairly freecombinations®. In Ellis’s time goats 
were already being represented!®. One picture in Kramer’ shows a 
transverse arrangement of conventionalized birds on the breast, 
and Choris® recorded the tattooing of a tree adapted to the lines of 
the body. There seems to have been no zoning, nor is there any 
indication of fixed designs used for certain parts of the body. 

Tattooing In The Marquesas. — The extent to which tattooing was 
developed in the Marquesas is paralleled only by the Maori tattooing. 
The technique follows the usual pattern, instruments like small 
adzes!!, made of fish bone!’, tortoise shell!1, and occasionally of 
human bone!®. The handle of the instrument was of bamboo, as also 
was the mallet. The latter was twice as thick at one end, this 
thick part being about one-fifth of the length*. It was about three- 
quarters of an inch thick, and a foot to eighteen inches long. The 
blade was inserted in the handle of the instrument, a little distance 
from the end. The number of teeth varied from two to twelve, and 


1 Byron, p. 136. 

# Malo, p. 101. 

3 Quoted by Roth, op. cit., p. 200. 

4 Eveleth, p. 43, 

5 Ellis, op. cit., p. 136, and p. 151; Byron, p. 136; Alexander, ne cit., p. 86. 
6 Roth, p. 199, reproduction from Choris. 

® Kramer, op. cit., p. 93. 

8 Kotzebue, New Voyages, Vol. II, p. 174; Mager, p. 194. 

9 Bennet, p. 212; Portloch, p. 77; Cook, Journal, Vol. III, ee xii. 

10 Roth, op. cit., p. 199. 

she Marchand, p- ‘99. 

12 Langsdorf, p- 118; Von den Steinen, p. 83. 
13 Handy, W.C., PP: 10—11: These were sometimes the bones of ay. 
“sacrifices... 

14 Von den Steinen, p. 83, Fig. mee 


The Tattooing Complex (6) 


the instruments from 38 mm. long and 2 mm. wide to 78 mm. long 
and 14 mm. wide’. The blade was sometimes crescent shaped and 
sometimes straight”. The complete set was kept in a bamboo case}, 
stoppered with a wad of tapa?. The soot from which the dye was 
made was derived from burned cocoa-nut shell‘ or burned aleurities®. 
The soot was collected on a small stone or in a cocoa-nut shell®, 
and mixed with water or vegetable oil’. The design was first sketched 
on in charcoal, and the dye was rubbed on the comb by two fingers 
of the operator’s right hand’. The blood was wiped away with a 
piece of tapa. 

Men were tattooed on the top of the head, the face, including 
the eyebrows, the inside of the nostrils, the tongue, the palms and 
backs of hands, arms, legs and trunks. Women were tattooed to the 
base of the gums, the ear lobes, behind the ears, on the curve of the 
shoulders, on the hands, the legs, and from the buttocks down’. 

The procedure connected with tattooing was extremely elaborate,— 
including the construction of a special house for the tattooing of 
an eldest son (opou) by the ka’to1, a more or less unorganized group 
of younger sons and daughters who were tattooed free while the 
opou was resting”. 

The craftsmen wereitinerant artists,not organized in any guild". 
Each artist ranked as a tuhuna and as such had charge of chanting 
genealogies and sacred songs, and Von den Steinen! believes he was 
also a healer. He was fed and housed by the family of the opou, and 
handsomely recompensed", — there being an initial agreement as 
to the amount?*. The chief tattooer had four or five assistants who 
held the arms and legs of the patient, and sometimes filled in the 
lesser designs after he had outlined them. The father was tabooed 
throughout the operation, and he, with the help of a virgin, mixed 
the pigment, but no strictly priestly functions are recorded". 

The ceremonies of tattooing centered around the importance at- 
tributed to the opou or eldest son. A special house was built for 
him with a sleeping house and cook house attached. The younger 
sons and daughters, sometimes forty in all, raided the homes of the 


1 Von den Steinen, p. 83, abb. 37. 

* Langsdorf, p. 118; Von den Steinen, p. 83. 
3 Handy, W. C., pp. 10—11. 

4 Porter, p. 124. 

5 Handy, W. C., p. 10; Von den Steinen, p. 84. 
6 Von den Steinen, p. 84, and Fig. 39. 

7 Berchon, p. 107. 

8 Handy, W. C., p. 11. 

9 Thid., p. 14. 

49 Yhid., p. 7. 

13 Thid:, p. 9. 

12 Von den Steinen, p. 60. 

13 Langsdorf, p. 118. 

14 Handy, W. C., pp. 7—9. 


74 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


relatives of the opou for food, building materials, and tapa with 
which to pay the tattooers. The morning on which the operation 
was to begin, drums were beaten to announce to the village the 
beginning of the taboo. The end of the operation was marked by a 
great feast at which the boys danced to show their new designs!. 
Boys were tattooed at puberty, girls at about twelve. A girl with 
an untattooed hand could not make poipoi or rub the bodies of the 
dead?. A tattooed hand could not eat from the same dish with an 
untattooed hand. No ceremonies were given for the girls’ tattooing, 
but a chief occasionally gave a feast for a new design recently 
tattooed on his wife*. Tattoo marks were definitely associated with 
blood revenge’, even women receiving a revenge tattoo mark, a 
fish hook design on the cheeks and neck. The patterns on older men 
were renewed several times, (Von den Steinen believes this was for 
protection in war’.) 

The whole emphasis was on the rank of the first born, as against 
the younger children. 

The designs® were characterized by an extreme attention to zon- 
ing. Square and rectangular zones were filled in by intricate ar- ; 
rangements of small rectangular and curvilinear motifs. A few thin- 
ly disguised naturalistic designs occurred. The earlier . tattooing’ 
was characterized by large surfaces of very fine, almost uniform 
detail, and carefully observed zones. The zoning gave way to 
transverse tooth-edged sections, in the later development. The 
delicate minute patterns used to fill in the large spaces gave way 
to solid black surfaces, as the emphasis was more on the ability to 
bear pain; and chiefs who already possessed elaborate patterns 
would pay to have these obliterated by the solid black tattooing as 
witness to their fortitude. 

Tattooing Among the Maori. — There were two types of tattoo- 
ing in New Zealand,’ — the elaborate curvilinear patterns of the 
northern Maori and the simple straight line tattooing of the southern 
Maori. Two kinds of instruments were used in the northern group, — 
one a small toothed adze, similar to that used throughout the Poly- 
nesian area, the other a sharp, single-pointed instrument, used in 
making the singular deep furrows, characteristic of the northern 
group®. The blade of the instrument was made of bone,!° andattached — 
to a wooden handle, which contained a fore-finger rest, and was 


1 Handy, W. C., p. 9; Von den Steinen, p. 85. 

* Handy, W. C., p. 12. 

3 Thid., p. 8. 

4 Langsdorf, p. 121; Von den Steinen, p. 64, Fig. 16. 

5 Thid., p. 66. 

6 Figures and Plates in Handy and Von den Steinen. 

7 Von den Steinen, p. 144 et. seq. 

8 Skinner, H. D., Culture Areas in New Zealand; Polack, I, P. 45. 
® Roth, Maori Tatu and Moko; Robley, p. 55. 

10 Roth, loc. cit.; Cruise, p. 136. 


The Tattooing Complex 75 


sometimes decorated. The single-pointed moko was like a chisel, 
about one millimeter broad and four millimeters long,! the blade 
being of whale bone.? One end of this instrument was shaped like 
a flat knife to wipe off the blood?. Pigment was made by burning 
several kinds of wood, or sometimes the vegetable caterpillar, 
in a small kiln.* The soot was collected on a frame of flat sticks and 
mixed with dog fat. It was either used in this form or fed to a dog, 
and the kneaded faeces used.> The pigment from the burnt Kauri 
gum was sometimes collected on a basket smeared with fat, and 
kept thus for generations.4 The pattern was usually sketched on 
with a mixture of charcoal and water,® or with a sharp point.’ The 
instrument was either dipped in the pigment,’ or the operator held 
a little of the pigment between the thumb and fore-finger, and 
drew the chisel through it.® The blood was wiped away with a piece 
of flax,!° a wooden spatula," or the end of the instrument.* 

Men were tattooed on the face, the upper part of the trunk, 
_ and on the thigh to the knee. Occasionally the tip.of the tongue 
was tattooed!*. Women were tattooed on the lips, and sometimes 
between breast and navel, on the lower abdomen, on the thigh’, and 
on the hands and arms!*; but more usually they had only a sparse 
design on the lips and chin". 

The professional tattooers were well paid itinerant individuals’. 
Slaves who knew the art were immediately freed. 

The religious aspect was particularly emphasized by the stringent 
taboos. During the process the whole village was taboo!’, and the 
patients were not allowed to feed themselves with their own hands*. 
At the conclusion of the operation, three ovens were lighted, — one 
for the artificers, one for the gods, one for the newly tattooed and 
the rest of the people; the priest, by a ceremony of cooking food 
_ which was thenceremonially eaten, freed the people from the taboo’’. 
A human victim, to obtain whom a war party was dispatched, was 


1 Roth, Maori Tatu and Moko; Robley, p. 55. 
2 Tregear, p. 258. 

3 Thid., p. 259. 

4 Roth, op. cit., p. 41. 

5 Robley, p. 157. 

6 Tregear, pp. 258—259. 

7 Polack, I, p. 46. 

8 Roth, p. 41—42. 

® Best, The Maori, Vol. Il, p. 554; The New Zealanders, p. 137. 
10 The New Zealanders, p. 137. 

11 D’Urville, Vol. II, p. 448. 

12 Best, The Maori, II, p. 557. 

13 Tregear, p. 265, 

14 Roth, p. 33. 

15 Robley, pp. 33—38. 

16 Polack, II, p. 58; Tregear, p. 258. 

17 The New Zealanders, p. 138. 

18 Robley, p. 59; Tregear, p. 265. 

19 Roth, pp. 42—44. 


16 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


sacrificed! when a chief’s daughter had her lips tattooed. Contrary 
to the usual Polynesian practice, tattooing was done, not at puberty, 
but after full growth was attained?. Women were always tattooed 
on the lips before marriage*. Definite tattoo marks were not used 
as badges of mourning, but the ceremonial cuts women made on 
their bodies were filled in with pigment*, and this dyeing of scari- 
fication marks constitutes a real variation in technique’. Heads of 
dead relatives were sometimes tattooed®. 

Tattooing was more definitely associated with war than with 
rank. Slaves taken in childhood’ were not tattooed. But many chiefs 
were not tattooed at all§, and priests are said to have had only a 
small blotch over one eye®. New tattoo marks were sometimes 
assumed by all the warriors of the tribe before going to war!. 

The designs used by the southern tribes' were simple series of 
parallel lines, arranged in groups of three or four, alternately vertical 
and horizontal. The only curvilinear element was an S§-like figure 
in the middle of the forehead!?. The designs!* used by the northern 
tribes were all curvilinear, and elaborately stylized in respect to 
the sex of the wearer, and the part of the body to be decorated. 
Great emphasis was placed on the conformance of the design to the 
shape of the chin, the cheek, etc. The thigh pattern and the scroll 
used on each buttock were unvariable; but the smaller units used 
on the face permitted great individuality of arrangement, although 
all of these were based on a few curvilinear motifs. Roth™ distin- 
guished seven motifs: lines of dots or strokes, mat or plait work, 
ladder, chevron, circinate scroll, anchor, and trilateral scroll. 

Tattooing in Tahite>. — The tools used in Tahitian tattooing were 
the typical toothed adzes of varying sizes, and also a sharp single 
pointed tool resembling the Maori moko tool'*. The handles of the 
1 Best, Maori Religion and Mythology, Sec. I, p. 145. 
® Robley, (p. 38) thinks this is because further growth would distort HHOG. 
3 Tregear, p. 265. 

4 Roth, p. 34; Robley, p. 45. 

5 Best, "The Maori, Vol. II, p. 546. 

6 Roth, p. 44. 

? Dieffenbach, Vol. II, p. 34. 

8 Roth, p. 49. (Quotes Yate); Polack, I, p. 47. 

9 Savage, p. 48. 

10 Karle, p. 13; Savage, p. 47. Reka 

11 Best, The Maori, II, p. 549, 552; Tregear, p. 263; Cowan, p. 193; Beattie, 
p. 221; Roth, p. 134. 

12 White, Vol. I, Frontispiece. 

13 Reproductions in Robley and Roth. 

14 Roth, p. 34. 

15 Our information on tattooing in the Society Islands is also very sparse. It 
received no such impetus as did the Maori tattooing from the traffic in 
heads, and was early discouraged by the missionaries, although there 
seems to have been a temporary and poorly recorded efflorescense just 
before the practice began to die out. This latter fact is suggested by a 
comparison of accounts of the Forsters and of Ellis 40 years later. 

16 Roth, Tatu in the Society Islands, pp. 283—94. 


The Tattooing Complex . — | 17 


tools were of wood, and sometimes possessed a curved four-finger 
rest. The teeth ranged in number from three to twenty; the in- 
struments were about five inches long, and one-half an inch wide’. 
The blade and handle were bound together with bark string. The 
mallet was a paddle shaped stick, heavier than the instrument it- 
self, having a gradually tapering handle?. The blade was made of 
shell or the bones of birds or fishes?. The dye was made from the 
kernel of the aleurites nut, baked, reduced to charcoal, pulverized, 
and mixed with cocoa-nut oil?. The design was first traced on with 
charcoalt, the operator sometimes imprinting guide circles by bend- 
ing a leaf stem into a circle, dipping it into the dye and applying 
it to the stick®. The instrument was dipped in the dye, and the 
perforation accomplished by a sharp rap with the mallet®. 

Women were tattooed on the buttocks’, on the feet and ankles, 
and the hands and wrists*. The women were tattooed more sparingly 
than the men’, but what areas of the men’s bodies were tattooed is 
not recorded. They were certainly tattooed on the legs?, the trunk, 
the thighs, and the face’. 

There were special tattooing experts who were employed!®, and 
well remunerated in cloth and food’. Bennett! speaks of the pro- 
fession being followed particularly by hunchbacks. These operations 
seem to have been of a definitely religious character’, and the work 
was prefaced by offerings to the two divine patrons of tattooing”. 
The instruments used in tattooing chiefs or eldest sons were destroy- 
ed at the marai as soon as the work was completed!®. The tattooing 
of boys was begunat.the age of eight to ten’, while the arches on the 
girls’ buttocks were considered to be marks of attained puberty”. 
Ellis’s’ mention of immoral practices accompanying tattooing 
suggests a festival. Tattoo marks were occasionally adopted as 
badges of mourning, but this was not a common custom. A small 
spot was tattooed on the inside of a child’s arm as a sign that the 
child was free from taboo and might touch its parents’ food". 


1 Roth, Tatu in the Society Islands, p. 286. MS. Cook Expedition. 
2 Thid., pp. 283—94. 

3 Bllis, Researches, p. 206; Meinicke, II, p. 173. 

4 Ellis, I, p. 207. 

5 Bennet, p. 120. 

6 Banks, p. 25. 

* Forster, G., p. 557. 

8 Ellis, I, p. 208. 

® Roth, op. cit., Plates. 

10 Klis, I, p. 206; Wilson, p. 339. 

11 Page 117. 

12 Hillis, I, p. 206. 

13 Wilson, p. 342. 

14 Elis, I, p. 205, 

15 Forster, G., p. 555; Cook, Journal (Wharton Edition), p. 73. 
16 Wilson, p. 339. 


78 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Tattooing was practiced by all classes!. Special patterns were 
used to distinguish the seven orders of the Areois Society?. 

With the exception of puberty marks for girls, the arm marks, 
and the devices used among the Areois, there was little conven- 
tionalization of the designs with particular significance*. Both 
geometric figures, such as stars, circles, and lozenges, were used, 
as were also a large number of realistic designs which sometimes 
depicted whole scenes. The hospitality shown to representations of 
foreign objects, such as muskets, swords, etc., suggests a flexible 
arrangement of motifs and lack of conventionalization. The few 
designs? which are extant make only positive statements possible. 
The herring-bone and tooth lines were used, and triangles in a 
variety of combination. One drawing® shows the use of rather 
heavy design units, the drawing of Gerstaecker® shows a realistic 
fish combined with a semi-geometric design, containing hour-glass 
patterns. 

Tattooing In Samoa. — The Samoan tattooing instruments were 
of the universal small adze type, about six inches long, with a ser- 
rated edge like a comb’. The blades were made of human bone, or 
of tortoise shell’; the handles were of reed’, or wood’. The mallet 
was a long stick, widened at one end®. A complete set consisted of a 
number of instruments of different sizes; they were kept in a special 
wooden case, together with the cocoa-nut shell which held the 
pigment!®. 

The men were usually tattooed from calf to navel, and some- 
times onthe upper parts of the body!2 as well. Women were tattooed 
more lightly on hands, arms, and legs, and on the area just above 
the groin. The face was never tattooed except in the case of the 
nose which was a definite form of punishment/* in Western Samoa. 

The boys were tattooed between the ages of twelve and fifteen. 
A number of boys of the same age were tattooed with the chief’s son, 
ceremoniously “‘sharing his pain’’, and the expenses of their tattoo- 
ing were paid by the chief’s family'4. The families of these youths. 
were also recompensed by the present of a mat. Four or five youths 
were usually tattooed together, and an equal number of operators 


1 Ellis, I, p. 205. 

2 Thid., p, 189. 

3 Ellis, II, pp. 206—208. 

. Roth, op. cit., Plates X XIIT and XXIV. 
$ Ibid., Plate XXIII. 

6 Von den Steinen, p. 149, Fig. 96. 

7 Pritchard, p, 145. 

3’ Marquardt, p. 9. 

® Kramer, Die Samoa Inseln, Vol, Il, p. 75. 
10 [bid., p. 74; Marquardt, p. 9. 

11 Stair, p. 160. 

12 Marquardt, Figures. 

13 Stair, p. 101, 

ae Thid., p, 158, 

15 Turner, p. 89. 


The Tattooing Complex 19 


‘might be summoned. The chief operators brought their instruments 
and they seemed to have had a train of assistants!. The operators 
brought their families with them, and a special house was erected in 
the center of the village?. This house was taboo to the boy’s female 
relatives, whom he called “‘tuafafine’. No food could be taken into 
it. A great feast opened the proceedings, which included a sham 
fight and the initial payment to the artists?. The operation some- 
times took as long as three months, and the whole period was re- 
garded as one of festivity. There were many visitors in the village 
and sham fights, wrestling, boxing, and dancing beguiled the time’. 
The other payments were made when the operation was half 
completed, and when only the tattooing of the navel remained’. 
Marquardt® considers the tattooer to have been a priest, accusing 
the priests of having usurped a profitable secular profession; but 
Turner’, Stair’, and Pritchard’, all speak of the tattooers as an 
organized group of craftsmen, resembling the house builders and 
canoe builders. In eastern Samoa they were not organized, but 
worked as individual artists. However, the taboo-lifting ceremony® 
which concluded the operations seems to have had supernatural 
reference and in this the tattooers officiated. 

The evening before this ceremony, operators, attendants, and 
newly tattooed youths repaired to the malae with lighted torches. 
The torches were extinguished and a water bottle (a gourd) was 
dashed to pieces in front of the young chief. The next day the 
whole group were sprinkled with water from a cocoa-nut shell by 
one of the operators. The tattooing of women was a minor matter, 
unmarked by festival orrite!®. Girls were debarred from no activity 
because not yet tattooed, but untattooed boys were segregated in 
the aumaga, the organization of untitled men, and forbidden to 
make kava or tafolo. 

Rank was very definitely and commercially bound up with 
tattooing, — the youths of lesser importance being tattooed with 
the chief’s sons, although Stair says!! this form of tattooing is looked 
downupon. Youths were tattooed in order of rank!?. The bottle was 
broken only in front of a chief. When the son of a very important 
chief was tattooed, the operation was made the occasion of a gather- 
ing of people from all over the district". 

1 Stair, p. 159; Pritchard, p. 143. 
* Marquardt, p. 10; Stair, p. 160. 
3 Stair, loc. cit. 

4 Thid., p. 186; Marquardt, p. 11. 
5 Pritchard, p. 144, 

6 Page 17. 

7 Page 89, 

8 Page 164, 

® Stair, pp. 163—1]64. 

10 Turner, p, 91. 


11 Page 158. 
12 Pritchard, p. 143. 


80 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Mrs. Handy! obtained accounts in Western Samoa. of definite 

patterns associated with and restricted to the two ranks of chiefs 
and talking chiefs. In Kastern Samoa no particular design was so 
restricted but if several boys of different ranks were tattooed 
together, the most elaborate design, the largest number of bands 
and triangles, must be put on the boy of highest lineage, the sons of 
the chiefs outranking the sons of talking chiefs. This is consistent 
with the Eastern Samoan arrangement by which a high chief had 
more terraces to his house than a talking chief, but no set number 
was necessary. Analogous to thefact that the7'us Tonga was too sacred 
to be tattooed by one of his subjects is the usage relating to the T'ua 
Manu’a, the sacred high chief of the Manu’a Archipelago. If so be it 
he had been tattooed before he was consecrated, well and good, 
but once consecrated, no one could draw his blood. 
The elements of the design were the same for both sexes, but the 
arrangement was radically different”. In the case of the women, the 
designs were scattered sparsely, with careful regard for symmetry, 
over the parts of the body decorated, while in men’s tattooing, 
these elements occurred only in the occasional narrow spaces left 
in an otherwise completely tattooed surface. The commonest mo- 
tives were the flying foxes which occur also in various reduced forms, 
four and eight pointed stars, herring-bone series, and arrangements 
of dots. A special series of dots on the inner arm may have been 
either individual identi ication marks, or district marks*. The navel 
was the last part tattooed®, and invariably, i ina denion known as ne 
bat’s wing®. 


ANALYSIS OF TATTOOING. 


The core of the tattooing complex was a uniformity of technique, 
in which a dye made of soot mixed with oil or water was pricked 
into the skin in decorative designs, by a toothed adze-like instrument. 
Both men and women were tattooed throughout the area, and there 
was definite specialization of the craftsmen. 

The variations in the technique were negligible, except in the 
case of the single-pointed, deeper-cutting moko tool of the northern 
Maori’, and the treatment of scarification marks among the Maori. — 
The size of the blade and the length of the mallet varied from group 
to group, and preference was sometimes for bone and sometimes for 


1 Handy, W. C., Samoan Tattooing, p. 21. 

2 Marquardt, Figures. 

2 Tide ps 24, 

: Pritchard, p. 145. Some such form of identification is made plausible by the 
fact that relatives claimed the bodies of the slain, ee the bodies of 
the slain were decapitated, Brown, G., p. 170. 

5 Pritchard, p. 140. 

6 Brown, G., p. 100. 

7 The same tool occurred in Tahiti; see p. 76. 


The Tattooing Complex 81 


shell, etc., but the essential features were constant. In all parts of 
the area the design was sometimes, though not always, sketched on 
first ; in Tahiti the special device of a circular bamboo fiber was used. 
The blood was wiped away with tapa or flax, and in New Zealand 
the other end of the tool was sometimes shaped for this purpose. 
The parts of the body decorated varied considerably, — the Samoans 
never tattooing on the face for decorative purposes. The thigh design 
was most universal and received the most conventionalized treat- 
ment. The women in all cases were less decorated than the men, 
except possibly in Southern New Zealand. The craftsman assumed 
ceremonial functions in Samoa and possibly in the Marquesas. He 
was definitely professional throughout the area, and handsomely 
paid. His prestige was greatest in Samoa and New Zealand, and 
probably least in Hawaii. | 

The connection with puberty was definite in Tahiti and the 
Marquesas, lacking in the case of boys in New Zealand, and 
problematical in Hawaii. Festivals accompanied tattooing in 
Samoa, and probably in Tahiti. Human sacrifices are reported for 
New Zealand alone. Tattooing was connected with mourning in 
New Zealand and the Marquesas, where the mourning cuts were 
filled in with pigment, and in Tahiti and Hawaii where memorial 
patterns were used. The mourning aspect was the chief emphasis in 
Hawaii. Tattoo marks were memorials of revenge obligations in the 
Marquesas, and used as community-enforced punishment in Samoa. 
Strict taboos surrounded the tattooing in New Zealand and the 
Marquesas, but these taboos varied in content; men could not bathe 
in the Marquesas; in New Zealand they could not feed themselves 
with their own hands while undergoing the operation. The taboo 
was lifted by food ceremonies in New Zealand, bathing in the Mar- 
quesas, and sprinkling in Samoa. The design varied from group to 
group, from the use of the circle and geometrical forms in close 
association with a very free application of realistic designs in 
Tahiti, to the textile patterns and sparse rectilinear designs in 
Hawaii, the heavy solid tattooing, with occasional more lightly 
decorated spacing on Samoan men, and the scanty application of 
the filling-in designs to the Samoan women, to the elaborate and 
artistic developments of the Maori and the Marquesans; in the first 
place the adaptation with scroll to every part of the body decorated, 
in the second a multiplicity of elements arranged in definite zones, 


CONCLUSIONS 


An attempt has been made to investigate the stability of the 
different elements involved in the complex of activities centering 
about canoe building, house building, and tattooing in five insular 
cultures of Polynesia. In the case of canoe building, variations in 
technique and variations in mechanical principles were found to be 
very rare. The relative prestige and importance of priest and crafts- 
man varied tremendously from Hawaii, where the priest performed 
the skilled parts of the work and the builders were held in low esteem, 
to Samoa, where the priest had no function at all, and the builders 
were enormously powerful. But the importance and prestige of 
these two professions were found not to vary inversely because the 
ceremonial prerogatives and duties of rank in New Zealand distorted 
such a negative correlation, — leaving some parts of the work 
neither to priest nor craftsman, but to the chief. The taboos varied 
in strength from a taboo which covered the whole course of the 
operation and all who participated in it in the Marquesas, to a mere 
formal technique for excluding intruders in Samoa. The content of 
the taboos, with the emphasis on contamination from women or 
food, infringement by intrusion or noise as the case might be, was 
seen to be even more variable. The religious ceremonies,— when they 
occurred, — followed to some extent a logical pattern imposed by 
the stages in the construction of a canoe, but this same series or 
steps was marked by formal payment of the workers in Samoa, 
instead of offerings to the gods as in Tahiti or sacred chants as in the 
other groups. The extent to which the canoe entered into the re- 
ligious complex of each group also showed difference, — the sacred 
canoes definitely dedicated to a god’s service being peculiar to 
Tahiti, the sacredness of the canoe per se, as demonstrated by the 
aura of canoes being greatest in the Marquesas, and the canoe 
having a purely secular character in Samoa. The connection with 
rank seems to have been almost completely fortuitous. 

In house building, the basic structure and the important technical 
‘principles of ridge pole, sliding-door!, the use of lashings and joints, 
bonnetting of roof with the help of a supplementary ridge pole, 
showed very slight deviations. The most definite individualization 
occurred in the shape and appearance of the house, and this must 
be attributed not only to the instability of the shape, but also to its 
dependence upon the materials used. The substitution of grass for 
sugar-cane leaves or of reeds for heavy slabs of wood produces a 


1 The door did not occur in Samoa. 


Conclusions 83 


change in appearance disproportionate to the changes which have 
really occurred. When this variation in material is combined with 
such structural variation as the round ground plan in Samoa, the 
steep rear roof in the Marquesas, or the hip-roof of Hawaii, a unique 
form of house is found in each group. If the form of the house is 
taken to be closely allied with the decoration of the house, (as the 
shape of the stern and bow pieces might be considered to be in the 
case of canoe building), these two aspects, taken together may be 
said to be most individually developed. The style of decoration is 
fundamentally different in each of the four groups where decoration 
occurs, as is also the particular emphasis on beauty of structure in 
Samoa. The priest performed some ceremonies in the Marquesas, 
New Zealand, and Hawaii, but these differed considerably. The 
craftsman was simply a man more skillful than his neighbor, but not 
strictly a professional in Hawaii, while in other groups he enjoyed 
great prestige. The division of houses according to function (per- 
haps originally associated coherently with the various taboo opera- 
tions) varied from household specialization in Hawaii to village 
specialization in New Zealand, and the degree to which these houses 
were sacred, and the uses to which they were put had undergone 
great reinterpretation. The taboos attach themselves indiscrim- 
inately to various parts of the house. The connection with rank 
was partly dictated by the wealth and prestige incident to rank, but 
this did not prevent the Maori chief from residing in a mean hut, 
while nominally owning the great carved house. The relationship 
between the chief’s establishment and the community varied from 
its great importance in the Marquesas, to very little importance in 
Hawaii. 

In tattooing the technique was even more constant than in either 

of the preceding complexes, but this is explicable in terms of the 
relative simplicity of the process as compared with canoe building, 
for example. The style of decoration was unique and specially 
developed in each area; the closest associations seem to be between 
Hawaii and Southern New Zealand, but here the simplicity of the 
design may overweigh the apparent resemblance. The parts of the 
body decorated also varied, but the tendency to tattoo men more 
completely and elaborately than women was amore constant feature. 
The status of the craftsman was less definite, but he seems to have 
enjoyed greatest individual renown among the Maori, general 
ceremonial functions in the Marquesas, and specific ceremonial 
unctions in Samoa. The priest played an important part only in 
New Zealand. The relation of tattooing to puberty, in the case of 
boys, to puberty and marriage in the case of girls, follows no definite 
lines. The peculiar development of tattooing in New Zealand 
necessitated tattooing of adults, as did its use for mourning in 
Hawaii. The content of the taboos and rites was different in each 
group. 

od 


84 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Thus, in these three complexes all having a definite technique, 
a style of art, religio-ceremonial relationships, craft specialization, 
and some relation to rank, there is found to be least variation in 
technique and especially in function, and most in form and style of 
decoration. The other elements, and this includes decorative art also 
in the case of house-building, vary from maximum development in 
one area, as ceremonialism in Hawaii, decorative art in the Mar- 
quesas and New Zealand, prestige of craftsmen in Samoa, duties 
through rank in New Zealand, and exemption from work in Hawaii, 
to a very weak development in other island groups as decorative 
art in Tahiti, or connection between rank and canoe building in the 
Marquesas, to almost nonexistence in other groups, as decoration in 
Samoa and prestige of craftsmen in Hawaii. That some of these 
elements might have disappeared entirely in a few hundred years is 
suggested by the weakening of the religious complex in Samoa, and 
the little emphasis upon decorative tattooing in Hawaii. In any 
case, the religio-ceremonial elements, the status of priests and 
craftsmen, and the connection with social class seems to be fortui- 
tous, immensely variable in detail, and particularly subject to re- 
_ interpretation in terms of the prevailing pattern of each group. 

General application of these conclusions is limited by the fact that 
they are based upon the examination of only three aspects of one 
culture, but, while the positive conclusions, i. e., that technique, 
particularly functional variation, is most stable and form as ex- 
pressed by shape, size, etc., and decorative elements are most 
variable, cannot be claimed as necessarily true for other areas, the 


negative conclusions can be so generalized. This study indicates _ 


that if in this one area, taboos, rituals, religious significances, 
prerogatives of rank, and questions of professional status are found 
to be so variable and sensitive to reinterpretation, then evidence 
of this type is manifestly unreliable data on which to base historical 
reconstructions. Elements whi h do vary as much as these, which 
yield so swiftly to the cultural emphasis within one small area, are 
not valid data for the study, for instance, of possible culture contact 
between Oceania and the Americas, or Africa and Melanesia. — 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The type of material available for Polynesia is in peculiar need of biblio- 
graphical annotation, as many of the titles are unspecific and misleading. 
Accordingly, when any work listed in this bibliography has been used as an 
authority on any group, to which its title makes no reference, an abbreviation 
of the name of this group will be placed in parenthesis after the name of the 
work. These abbreviations are: Hawaii (H), the Marquesas (M), the Maori of 
New Zealand (NZ), Tahiti and the other Society Islands (T), and Samoa (S). 

The following list contains works specifically referred to in the text, or 
those which have been extensively utilized in obtaining the background for 
this study. It is by no means a complete bibliography of the subject, For the 
assistance of other research workers in this field, a list of available special 
bibliographies is appended. 

A. M. N. H. followed by a number refers to specimens in the American 
Museum of Natural History, New York. 


ABBREVIATIONS OF PERIODICALS 


Australian Association for the Advancement of Science — A. A. A. 8. 

Journal of the Polynesian Society — J. P. 8. 

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 
— J. R. AVI. 

Internationales Archive fiir Ethnographie — I. A. f. E, 

Transactions of the New Zealand Institute — T, N. Z, I. 


Alexander, A. B.: ‘“Notes on the Boats, Apparatus and Fishing Methods 
Employed by the Natives of the South Sea Islands and Results of 
Fishing Trials by the Albatross’. U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, 
Commissioner’s Report, 1901, pp. 741—829. 

Alexander, W. D.: A Brief History of the Hawawan People, 1891. 

Anderson, J. C.: Maori Life in Ao-tea, Wellington, 1907. 

Angas, G. F.: Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, 2nd ed., 
London, 1847. 

Banks, J.: Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. K. B. P. R.S. 
Edited by Sir Joseph D. Hooker, London, 1896. 

Barstow, A. C.: The Maori Canoe, T. N. Z.1., Vol. II, 1868, p. 71. 

Beattie, H.: Traditions and Legends Collected from the Natives of Murthiku 
(Southland, N. Z.), Part VIII, J. P. S., Vol. XXVITI, pp. 137—163. 
Ibid., Part XI, J. P. S., Vol. XXVIII, pp. 212—231. 

Bennett, F. D.: Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Around the Globe From the 
Years 1830 to 1836, London, 1840. 

Berchon, A.: Le Tatouage aux Iles Marquise, Bull. Soc. d’Anthropologie 
de Paris, Vol. I, pp. 99—117. 

Best, Eldson: The Maori, Memoirs of the Pol. Soc. Vol. II, 1924. 

— The Maori Canoe, Bul. Dominion Museum, No. 7, 1926. 

— Maori Religion and Mythology, Sect. I, Bul. Dominion Museum, No, 10, 
1924, 

— Maori Voyagers and their Vessels: How the Maori Explored the Pacific 
Ocean and Laid Down the Sea Roads for All Time, T. N. Z. I., Vol. 48, 
p. 447. 

— The Peopling of New Zealand, Man, 1914, No. 37. 

Bingham, C.: A History of Hawaii. 


86 The Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia 


Bishop, 8.: Reminiscences of Serano Bishop; Edited by L. Thurston, Honolulu, 
1911. 

Bougainville, Louis de: Voyage Around the World Performed by Order H. M. 
in the Years 1756, 7, 8, 9., translated from the French by J. R. Forster, 
London, 1772. 

Brigham, W. T.: Housebuilding of the Old Hawaiians With a Description of the 
Articles Used in Housebuilding, Mem. B. P. Bishop Museum, Vol. IT. 

Brown, George: Melanesians and Polynesians, New York, 1910. (S). 

Brown, J. M.: Maori and Polynesian, London, 1907. 

Brown, William: New Zealand and its Aborigines, London, 1845. 

Buller, J.: Forty Years in New Zealand, 1878. 

Byron: Voyages of H. M, Ship Blond to the Sandwich Islands in the Years 
1824—1825, (H) 

Cheever, H. T.: The Island World of the Pacific, 1851. (H) 

Christian, F. W.: The Hastern Pacific Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, 
London, 1910. 

Churchill, W.: Club Types of Nuclear Polynesia, Carnegie Institution Pub. 
255.° 

— The Polynesian Wanderings, Washington, D. C., 1911. 

— Sissano movements of Migration within and through Melanesia, Carnegie 
Institute, 1916. 

Churchward, W. B.: My Consulate in Samoa, London, 1887. 

Coan, T.: Life in Hawai, 1882. (M) 

Cobb, J. N.: Commercial Fisheries of the Hawaiian Islands, U. 8. Fish Com- 
mission, Commissioner’s Report, 1901, pp. 381—499. 

Colenso, W.: On the Maori Races of New Zealand, To Nee. ae Velie 
340—422, 1867. 

— Notes and Reminiscences of Early Crossings of the Romant, eic., T. N. Z. I., 
Vol. 27, p. 400, 1894. 

Cook, James: Voyages Toward the South Pole and Round the World, London, 
W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1777. 

— The Voyages of Captain James Cook in Two Volumes, London, Wm. 
Smith, 1842. 

Corney, P.: Voyages in the North Pacific, 1896. (H) 

Cowan, James: The Maoris of New Zealand, 1909. 

Crawfurd, I. C.: Recollections of Travels in New Zealand and Australia, 1880. 

Cruise, R.A.: Journal of a Ten.Months Residence in New Zealand, London,1823. 

Demandt, E.: Die Fischerei der Samoaner, Mitteilungen aus dem Museum ftir 
Volkerkunde in Hamburg, III, 1913. 

Dibble, Sheldon: A History of the Sandwich Islands, 1909. 

Dieffenbach, E.: Travels in New Zealand, London, 1843. 

Dixon, George A.: A Voyage Round the World, but More Particularly to the 
Northwest Coast of America ... in the “King George’ and the “Queen 
Charlotte’, 2nd ed., London, 1789. (H) 

Dixon, R. B.: “A New Theory of the Polynesian Race’, Proceedings Am. 
Philos. Soe., Vol. [X, No. 4, 1920, p. 261. 

— Oceanic Mythology (see Gray, L.H., The Mythology of All Races, Vol. IX). 

D’Urville, J. Dumont: Voyage del Astrolabe... Pendant les annees 1826-1829 
sous le commandement de M. J. Dumant D’ Urville, Paris, 1833—1834. 


(T) (NZ) 

Earle, A.: Narrative of a Nine Months Residence in 1827, in New Zealands, 
1909. 

Edge-Partington, J.: An Album of Weapons, Tools, Ornaments, etc., privately 
printed. 


Ella, S.: ‘“‘Samoa’’, A. A. A. §., Vol. VI, 1892, p. 622. 

Ellis, W.: Journal of William Ellis: A Narrative of A Tour Through the 
Sandwich Islands, in 1823, Honolulu, 1917. 

Ellis, W.: Polynesian Researches, in two volumes, London, 1829 (T) 

Emerson, N. B.: ‘“The Long Voyages of the Ancient Hawaiians,’ Haw. Hist. 
Soc. Papers, 1893. 


Bibliography 87 


Emory, K.: The Island of Lanai, B. P. B. Mus., Bull. XII, 1924. 

Erskine, J. E.: Journal of a Cruise Among the Islands of the Western Pacific, 
London, 18538, (8). 

Eveleth, E.: Letters (H). 

Fornander, A.: An Account of the Polynesian Race, 1878. 

Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folklore, 3rd_ series, 
nts by Thomas G. Thrum, Mem. B. P. Bishop Museum, Vol. VI, 
1920. 

Foster, G.: A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Re- 
solution, commanded by Captain James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 
4,0, London, L777. (H) (T). 

Foster, John R.: Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World, 
London, 1768, (T) (M). 

Fox, H.L.: “On Early Modes of Navigation”’, J.R.A.I., IV, 1875, pp. 399—430. 

Frazer, J. G.: The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Vol. II, 
The Belief Among the Polynesians, New York, 1922. 

Garnier, J.: Océanie: Les Iles des Paque, Loyalty et Tahiti, 1871. : 

Gill, W. W.: Jottings from the Pacific, London, 1885. (Cook group). 

— Infe in the Southern Isles, London, 1876. 

— Myths and Songs from the Southern Pacific, London, 1876. 

Graebner, F'.: Die Methode der Hthnologie, Heidelberg, 1911. 

Greiner, R, H.: Polynesian Decorative Design, B. P. Bishop Museum, Bul. 
No. 7, 1923. 

Haddon, A. C,: «‘The Outrigger Canoes of Torres Straits and N. Queensland’’, 
(In Hssays and Siudies Presented to William Ridgeway), 1923, 

— ‘‘The Outriggers of Indonesian Canoes’’, J. R. A. I., Vol. 50, pp. 69—134, 

Hale, H.: Hthnology and Philology of the U., S. Exploring Expedition, U, 8. 
Explo. Exped., Vol, IV, 1846. 

Hamilton, A.: The Art Workmanship of the Maori Race in New Zealand, 
Wellington, 1896. 

Handy, E. C.8.: The Native Culture in the Marquesas, B. P. Bishop Museum, 
Bull. No. 9, 1923. 

— “The Oracle House in Polynesia’, J. P. S. Vol. 35, p. 47. : 

— Samoan House Building, Cooking and Tattooing, B. P. Bishop Museum 
Bull, 15, 1924, . 

Handy, W.C.: Tattooing in the Marquesas, B.P. Bishop Museum, Bull. No, 1, 
1923. 

Hood, T. H.: Notes of a Cruise in H. M. Ship Fawn in the W. Pacific ... am 
the Year 1862, Edinburgh, 1863, (8). 

Hornell, J.: ““The Outrigger Canoes of Indonesia’, Madras Fisheries Bulletin, 
Vol, XII, pp. 43—114, 1920. . 

Hugenin, P.: Ratatea la Sacree, 1901. (T). 

Jarves, J. J.: History of the Hawaiian Islands, Honolulu, 1847. 

Kotzebue, O. von: Voyage of Discovery into the South Seas and Beerings 
Stratis ... Undertaken in the Years 1815 etc., London, 1821 (T). 

Kramer, A,: Die Samoa-Inseln, Stuttgart, 1902. 

— Hawaii, Ostmikronesien und Samoa, Stuttgart, 1906. 

Krustenstern, A. J. von: Voyage around the World in the Years 1803-4-5-6., 
translated from the German by Richard Belgrave Hoppner, Vol. I, 
London, 1813, (M). 

Langsdorf, G. H. von: Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World 
during the Years 1803—1807, London, 1813. (M). 

Laurence, N. L.: Old Time Hawaiians and their Work, New York, 1912. 

Linton, R.: The Material Culture of the Marquesas Islands, Memoir B. P. 
Bishop Mus., Vol. VIII, No. 5, 1923. 

New Zealanders, The, (The Library of Entertaining Knowledge, published 
under the Supervision of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know- 
ledge), London, 1830. 

Mager, H.: Le Monde Polynesian, Paris, 1902. (H). 


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